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NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

PEERS AND BUREAUCRATS. 

Two Problems of English Government. 

THE CHARACTER OF THE BRITISH 
EMPIRE. 
An Essay. Paper wrappers 

THE MAKING OF BRITISH INDIA. 
BRITAIN'S CASE AGAINST GERMANY. 
A HISTORY OF LIVERPOOL. 

The Culmination of Modern History. 

NATIONALISM AND INTER- 
NATIONALISM. 

2nd Impression. 

Times. — 'Vigorous, eloquent, well arranged. . . . 
The author knows precisely what he wants to say, 
and he says it ... in an argument which, while 
it is expounded with real eloquence and literary 
ability, is as closely knit and as carefully limited 
as a proposition of Euclid. . . . We know of no book 
in English which gives so clear a picture of the 
gradual development of the international idea.' 

NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT. 

THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE. 

2nd Edition. Revised and Enlarged 

Pall Mall Gazette. — 'A masterly survey of tbe 
developments which are the essential key to 
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the interest of a book like this, in which the vital 
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firmest grip of essentials, with the most liberal 
outlook, and with a fascinating ease of style.' 



NATIONAL 
SELF-GOVERNMENT 

ITS GROWTH AND PRINCIPLES 
THE CULMINATION OF MODERN HISTORY 

BY 

RAMSAY MUIR 

PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY 
OF MANCHESTER 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1919 



JDJ43 



A3 



TO 

J. R. M. 



PREFACE 

The purpose of this book is twofold. In the first place, 
I have tried to provide a brief historical survey of the 
development of parliamentary institutions in the modern 
world, such as will put the ordinary citizen in possession 
of the facts which he requires if he is to form a sound 
judgment upon the working of the system in our own 
and other countries. In the second place, I have tried 
to use this historical survey as a means of elucidating 
the problems of self-government, the difficulties which 
it has to face, the conditions which are necessary for its 
success, and the ways in which it is affected by the char- 
acters and traditions of the various nations which have 
adopted it. 

The book makes no pretence to be a scientific historical 
treatise on its subject. It is not systematic or exhaus- 
tive ; it includes few facts which are not, or ought not 
to be, pretty generally known ; it leaves almost un- 
touched the development of the institutions of half 
the countries of Europe, and of all the new lands of the 
non-European world, excepting the United States ; not 
because these countries do not present features of great 
interest, but because I had to keep my book within 
reasonable compass, and the main points which I wished 
to elucidate seemed to be adequately illustrated in the 
countries I have selected for fuller treatment. On the 

Til 



viii NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

other hand, the book is not a text-book, or condensed 
compendium of established facts. I fear it contains more 
disquisition than narrative, more argument than fact. It 
is, in short, a political essay rather than a formal history ; 
an attempt at what may be called 'historical politics,' 
a blend of narrative and analysis. 

Although I am very conscious of the defects of what 
I have written, I believe there is room, and need, for 
books of this type ; books which will aim at elucidating 
political problems in the light of their history, and 
especially of their recent history ; books designed for 
the use of the ordinary intelligent citizen who is neither 
an expert historian nor a professed political philosopher. 
It seems to me a strange thing that (so far as I am aware) 
there should be in English no book which tries to 
cover the ground I have attempted to survey. There are 
excellent analyses of the formal constitutional systems 
of the various modern States. There are admirable 
treatises on the working of the government of this 
country or that. There are useful summaries of modern 
political history which include the main facts about 
constitutional changes. But there does not, I think, 
exist any book which attempts in a clear and broad way 
to show how it has come about that the institutions of 
self-government have been adopted within a very short 
space of time in every land of Western civilisation, how 
historical circumstances have modified the forms which 
they have assumed, how these forms compare with one 
another in actual working, and how their development 
elucidates the problem of self-government, and the dangers 
against which it has to guard. I am not so foolish as 



PREFACE ix 

to imagine that I can, in so short a compass, have dealt 
satisfactorily with a theme so complex ; the most I can 
hope is that I may help some of my fellow-citizens to 
understand more clearly the political developments of 
the recent past, and therefore to approach with fuller 
understanding the political problems of the immediate 
future. 

This book is in some sense a sequel or companion to 
two other books, Nationalism and Internationalism and 
The Expansion of Europe, in which I have attempted to 
apply the same method to other great political problems. 
The three volumes were originally intended to be printed 
together under the general title of The Culmination of 
Modern History, though this book and The Expansion 
of Europe have both been considerably expanded from 
their original form. All three took their rise from a 
lecture given a couple of years since, in which I tried to 
show to a popular audience how all the greatest political 
developments of the modern world were being brought 
simultaneously to a great test in the world-war. These 
main developments seem to me to be, first, the growth of 
the idea of nationality, which is the foundation of all 
the rest ; second, the growth of the idea of international 
co-operation and international law, which is the fulfil- 
ment, not the antithesis, of the first ; third, the growth 
of the theory and practice of self-government through 
representative institutions, which is only possible in 
States unified by the sense of nationality ; and, fourth, 
the expansion of the political influence of Europe, and of 
the political ideas to which Europe has given birth, over 
the non-European world. The relation between these 

b 



NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 



THE ORDEAL OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 

When the future historian surveys the political state of 
the world as it was on the eve of the cataclysm of the 
Great War, he will record, as one of its most signifi- 
cant facts, that parliamentary institutions had become 
almost universal, either as the controlling factor, or at 
least as an important element, in the government of 
civilised states. With the institution of the Russian 
Duma in 1905 and of the Turkish Parliament in 1909, 
the only surviving non-parliamentary states of Europe 
had fallen into line with the rest during the decade 
immediately preceding the war ; outside of Europe not 
only all the American republics, and all the self-govern- 
ing British colonies, but also the Japanese Empire, had 
adopted this characteristically Western mode of govern- 
ment, while even China and Persia had made experi- 
ments in the same direction. In every state except 
Britain and the communities which have sprung from 
her loins, these representative systems had been the 
product of the last hundred years, and in most cases of 
the last fifty or sixty years, immediately preceding 
the war ; and even in Britain it was only during the 
last half -century that the bulk of the people had obtained 
the franchise. Our historian will note that in every 

A 



2 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

case these systems had been modelled, directly or in- 
directly, on the British system. And he will observe, 
perhaps with some surprise, that the only highly de- 
veloped communities in the world in which this prevailing 
fashion had not been fully followed were those of India 
and Egypt, although both of these countries were under 
the control of the Mother of Parliaments herself ; and 
that the popular discontents which found expression in 
both of these countries largely turned upon the demand 
that they also should be endowed with the system of 
government now accepted as one of the marks of a 
civilised state. Both the universality of this movement 
towards the adoption of self-governing institutions, and 
the still surviving exceptions to it, will seem to our 
historian, we may be sure, to be highly significant. His 
conclusion will and must be that the necessity of an 
effective public control over, or co-operation in, the 
business of government had become with quite extra- 
ordinary rapidity an accepted principle of Western 
civilisation. 

So much of the future historian's judgments we may 
securely anticipate, because we have thus far attributed 
to him only a statement of undeniable facts. And there 
is a further judgment which we may perhaps as confi- 
dently expect him to make. He will record that the 
Great War was the first really severe test to which the 
modern system of representative government had been 
exposed in most of the states affected by it, and that 
the ideal of self-government, equally with the ideals of 
nationalism and internationalism, was on its trial in 
this gigantic conflict. What we cannot yet venture to 
anticipate is his verdict on the results of the great ordeal. 
Will he have to say that the system of government by 



THE ORDEAL OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 3 

public discussion and under public control broke down 
under the ordeal and proved its inefficiency, at any 
rate for the purposes of war ; that the states which 
emerged with most success were those in which popular 
control had been only formal, a mere mask covering 
the operations of an efficient centralised power ; and 
that as a result of the war even the nations in which 
self-governing institutions seemed most deeply rooted 
had been driven in self-defence to change their systems ? 
Or will he record that on the whole the struggle proved 
a triumph for the system of popular government, and 
firmly and finally established it as the governing prin- 
ciple of all civilised states ? Or will his verdict perhaps 
be a mixed one ? Perhaps he will conclude that in 
some cases the modern system proved its strength and 
efficacy, and in others not : that it answered every 
call better than could have been foretold in those com- 
munities which were, by reason of the training and 
habits of their citizens, capable of using freedom nobly, 
and of imposing willingly upon themselves a discipline 
almost as effective as that elsewhere imposed by autho- 
rity ; that in other communities it broke down and led 
to disastrous results because the mass of citizens were 
not awake to their responsibilities, having been endowed 
with political power before they were ready for it ; and 
that in yet other cases the tragedies and agonies of the 
war were to be attributed, not to the deficiencies of 
popular government, but to the fact that popular govern- 
ment had been unreal, and that the members of these 
communities had not been allowed to exercise such a 
share in common affairs as their training and capacities 
would have justified. 

Although it is impossible as yet to anticipate the 



4 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

final verdict of history upon these momentous questions, 
since the great ordeal will not end with the war, and 
the problems of reorganisation during the generation 
following the war will afford a yet more acute and 
searching test, it is equally impossible and dangerous 
to avoid thinking about them. And the only profitable 
way of thinking about them is to co-ordinate and analyse, 
so far as we can, the experience we have had of the 
working of the institutions of self-government. That 
experience has been as yet, for the greater part of the 
world, very brief indeed, and the conditions have been 
changing with such amazing rapidity while we have 
acquired it that no one is justified in proclaiming very 
sweeping or dogmatic conclusions. But at least it has 
been sufficiently varied in its range, and in the case of 
the British communities sufficiently lengthy, to entitle 
us to form reasoned opinions. 

The ordeal of a great war is a far more searching test 
for the institutions of self-government than it is for 
those of open or veiled autocracy, just because the 
institutions of self-government, by their very nature, 
are manifestly designed primarily for a normal state of 
peace. The conduct of affairs by persuasion and agree- 
ment is obviously inconsistent with a state of war, in 
which force takes the place of persuasion, and com- 
pulsion of agreement. Self-government involves con- 
tinual compromise, and compromise must always imply 
a certain sacrifice of efficiency. That is the inevitable 
price which must be paid for liberty, even in times of 
peace. It is a price worth paying if it secures the real 
participation of the whole community in responsibility 
for the common welfare ; but it inevitably forms a 
handicap in war. And if a self-governing state acquits 



THE ORDEAL OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 5 

itself, in such an ordeal as that through which we are 
passing, with anything like the resolution, self-discipline 
and fixity of purpose, which are so much more easily 
attained in a state organised on an autocratic basis, the 
demonstration which will thus be given of the value of 
self-government will obviously be all the more cogent. 

A state which has organised itself primarily for war, 
and which has willingly submitted itself to the rigid 
discipline of a military autocracy mainly in the hope 
of victory, must, if it is to justify these sacrifices, achieve 
nothing less than complete triumph. A nation which 
has organised itself primarily for peace, and which has 
with its eyes open accepted the risks and the inefficiencies 
of a system of government by discussion for the sake of 
the moral values to be derived from it, will justify itself 
if it only succeeds in defending its existence ; nay, it 
will not be finally condemned even by defeat. For 
although the doctrine of power becomes meaningless and 
futile in the hour of defeat, and no man can believe 
that Might is Right except when Might is on the side 
of the causes which he holds dear, the doctrine of liberty 
becomes only more sacred in disaster, and more capable 
of appealing to the heroic in men. 

Popular participation in government is in natural 
accord with the essential Western ideas of Liberty, and 
of Rational Law reflecting the public conscience * ; and 
for that reason it is only in Western communities that 
any advance towards it has ever been made. But this 
is not to say that Liberty and Rational Law can only 
exist, or will even under all conditions thrive best, 

1 See the first essay in Nationalism and Internationalism, which dis- 
cusses these ideas, and was designed as an introduction to the whole 
series of essays of which the present volume is a part. 



6 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

under its shelter. To make such a claim would be to 
deny the value of all that has been achieved for civilisa- 
tion in most of the great states of the world. The most 
nearly perfect systems of Rational Law that have ever 
been created were due to the Roman Empire and to the 
autocracy of Napoleon ; and it is certain that the British 
rule has given to India a far more just and unvarying 
system of law than could ever have been devised by a 
body representing a majority among the many conflict- 
ing races, castes, and religions of India, even if such a 
body could ever have been formed. Again, liberty of con- 
science, liberty of thought, liberty of speech, liberty of 
the press, liberty of action may exist in the highest 
practicable degree under a non-popular government, as 
they do to-day in India ; on the other hand, they may 
be, and sometimes have been, denied by representative 
governments, as in modern Hungary. 

Nevertheless it is the natural tendency of all peoples 
among whom the seminal ideas of Western civilisation 
have taken root to strive towards self-government, and 
accordingly the history of Europe is full of experiments 
in that direction. But most of them, interesting as 
they are in themselves, have little or no bearing upon 
the problems of government of the great modern 
states. The little city-republics of ancient Greece and 
of mediaeval Italy, Germany and Flanders were on so 
small a scale that they afford practically no guidance 
for the government of the nation-state. The most 
essential feature of their system was the direct partici- 
pation of all citizens in the main functions of govern- 
ment, and this was only possible when they could all 
assemble in a single market-place, and all have some 
acquaintance at least with the leading members of the 



THE ORDEAL OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 7 

community. So Aristotle held that no state could be 
healthy which had more than ten thousand citizens ; and 
Rousseau, with the model of Geneva in his mind, could 
maintain that democracy was impossible in a large state, 
and that the system of representation was a denial of 
its very essence. Monarchy was in his view the only 
efficient method of government for a very large state, 
and he would probably have approved for nation-states 
the system of the first and third Napoleons — the system 
of government by an autocrat, supported by frequent 
plebiscites by universal suffrage. 

But there is one respect in which the experience of 
the small city-states, where every citizen directly and 
constantly shared in the work of government, concurs 
with the experience of the great modern states wherein 
any such participation is impossible. Both alike point 
to certain essential conditions without which govern- 
ment by discussion and agreement must be impossible 
or disastrous in its results. These conditions are two. 

In the first place, the mass of active citizens who take 
a share in the direction of affairs must be in some degree 
educated, not merely in the formal sense, though that 
is important, but still more in the sense of having been 
trained in the practice of co-operation in common affairs. 
No community can become self-governing whose members 
are not capable of appreciating the complexity of political 
issues, or have not learnt by practical experience the 
need for compromise, for give-and-take, for the loyal 
acceptance of results arrived at after discussion, and 
for the willing subordination of self ; and these things 
can only be acquired by training. Where these qualities 
are lacking, the institution of the forms of self-govern- 
ment must lead either to anarchy, or to the enthrone- 



8 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

ment of unscrupulous intriguers who play upon the 
ignorance of the voters and their lack of political intelli- 
gence. It was only in the most highly educated society 
of the ancient world, Athens, that even city-democracy 
ever became a reality ; and even there it was insecure, 
disturbed, and short-lived. The creation of this political 
aptitude among a people is not to be easily or rapidly 
brought about. It takes time. The best system of 
school-instruction is by itself quite insufficient to pro- 
duce it. Only the formed habit of co-operation and 
discussion in minor matters can bring it fully into being, 
and the number of societies whose conditions of life have 
made it easy for its citizens to acquire this habit has 
been small. 

The second condition of the successful working of self- 
government is that there must exist a real unity of senti- 
ment in the community which attempts it. When a 
community is divided by deep and irreconcilable anti- 
pathies, by the unconquerable distrust and dislike of 
one element in it for another, discussion becomes futile 
and agreement impossible, and the attempt at self- 
government leads only to anarchy. Even in the city- 
state this condition often existed, and Aristotle recog- 
nises it as fatal to civic health in his discourses on what 
he calls Gravis — meaning by that phrase neither more 
nor less than fundamental disunity of sentiment among 
the citizens. Yet in the city-state unity of sentiment 
was comparatively easy to create, for the citizens dwelt 
together within the same ring-wall, discussed public 
affairs together in the market-place, knew their leaders 
by sight and voice, saw their common needs and their 
common dangers at close quarters. In the great modern 
state unity of sentiment is indeed a hard thing to create. 



THE ORDEAL OF SELF-GOVERNMENT S 

It has, in fact, been created only by one force — by what 
we call the national spirit ; and this is the supreme 
significance of the growth of the national spirit in Europe, 
that it alone has made self-government on the national 
scale possible. The only communities in Europe or in 
the world in which self-government has been success- 
fully applied are those in which the national spirit is 
dominant. Where it is once firmly rooted, the national 
spirit can not merely survive, but can even turn to 
good ends, differences of party, creed and class. For 
these differences produce a deepened sincerity and a 
greater pith and force in discussion, so long as those 
who hold them are thinking primarily of the welfare of 
the nation as a whole, and so long as the mass of men 
can continue to believe that their opponents (however 
mistaken) are genuinely desirous of national advantage 
as they conceive it, and not merely of sectional advan- 
tage. But where the national spirit does not exist — 
where the state consists of acutely hostile national 
groups, each permanently suspicious of the others, and 
some of them aiming merely at the establishment of 
their racial ascendancy — self-government in any real 
sense cannot exist ; and if its institutions are estab- 
lished, their effect will either be nullified by the clash of 
conflicting and irreconcilable factions (as in Austria), or 
they will afford to the better organised master-race the 
means of imposing its ruthless dominion upon its recalci- 
trant subjects, as in Hungary. The unifying force of the 
national spirit is indeed the only factor which has yet 
been discovered that can make self-government as real 
a thing in the large state as it was in the little city- 
state. It was because England was the first of the 
European nations to become conscious of her nation- 



10 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

hood that she was also the first to work out a practicable 
system of national self-government. It was also because 
the English people had obtained some training in the 
practice of self-government on the petty scale of the 
village, the town and the county, and later of the 
trading company, the trade union and the co-operative 
society, that they were able to show the continuous 
political aptitude which alone enabled their system of 
national self-government to establish itself and to enlarge 
its range. 

It is with the development of representative self- 
government on the national scale that we are concerned 
in this essay ; and if we are to understand the conditions 
of its well-being it is necessary to survey in outline the 
processes by which it has been brought into being, how 
it has worked under various conditions, and how the 
states in which it has been made effective compare with 
those in which it has been little more than a form. 



II 

THE MEDIEVAL ESTATES AND THE REPRE- 
SENTATIVE PARLIAMENT 

The rudiments of a representative system arose, in 

most of the countries of western Europe, out of the 

conditions of feudalism ; and its source is to be found 

in the courts of feudal princes, which their chief tenants 

were bound to attend, and in which these tenants found 

a means of ensuring that the conditions of the feudal 

contract were not interpreted to their disadvantage. As 

it was impossible for the whole body of minor feudal 

lords to attend, the custom grew up during the twelfth 

century (perhaps it was borrowed from the Church) of 

allowing them to act through representatives. In this 

system the lower grades of the feudal hierarchy — the 

small freeholders and the semi-servile peasantry — had, 

of course, no part. But the two elements in a mediaeval 

state which were in some degree independent of the 

feudal hierarchy, the great corporations of the Church, 

and the semi-autonomous merchants of the towns, could 

be, and in nearly all Western countries presently were, 

worked into the scheme. Thus arose the Three Estates 

of the Nobles or feudal tenants, the Church, and the 

Towns ; in some cases the lesser nobles, acting through 

their representatives, formed an additional estate. These 

Estates claimed the right to be consulted on any change 

in the customs by which the rights and duties of their 

castes were defined, and on any modification in the 

n 



12 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

customary dues which they were called upon to pay. 
Hence legislation and taxation came to be regarded as 
falling to a varying and undefined extent within the 
province of the Estates in nearly all the countries of 
western Europe, and out of this system, under favour- 
able conditions, a parliamentary system could grow up. 

In actual fact, however, the Estates did not develop 
into a true national parliament in any country except 
England, and this for several reasons. 

In most cases the Estates were purely provincial 
organisations, very jealous of their provincial ' rights ' 
and ' liberties,' and they therefore became actual obstacles 
in the way of national unity, which was represented, in 
most countries, solely by the person and authority of 
the king and his officials. This was the case, for example, 
in Spain, where the Cortes or Estates of Castile and 
(still more) of Aragon had acquired during the mediaeval 
period a remarkable degree of power. When Spain 
became a united kingdom, the overthrow of the pro- 
vincial estates formed part of the process of unification, 
and their purely provincial patriotism provided excuses 
for the high-handed autocracy of Charles v. and Philip n. 
In the Netherlands Charles v. tried to give some unity 
to the disconnected provinces which he had inherited 
by setting up a States-general for them all, but the 
existence of this body was at first resented by the local 
patriotism of the provinces. In France the Crown tried 
the same device during the fourteenth century ; but 
the States -general (as this common assembly was called) 
showed themselves so grasping of power and so un- 
patriotic during the wars with England that the kings 
summoned them as little as possible, and were probably 
supported by popular opinion in doing so. It was the 



MEDIEVAL ESTATES AND PARLIAMENT 13 

easier for the king to adopt this policy, because the 
provincial estates still survived in many of the provinces : 
they survived, indeed, in the provinces known as the 
fays d'etat down to the French Revolution. How great 
an obstacle these provincial estates formed to the growth 
of a strong state was perhaps most clearly illustrated in 
the case of Prussia : one of the main tasks of the Great 
Elector, the real founder of the greatness of the Hohen- 
zollern monarchy, was the destruction of the privileges 
claimed by the provincial estates in the various scattered 
districts of his realm. In many countries, as, for example, 
in Austria, these provincial estates survived into the 
eighteenth or even into the nineteenth century. But 
they had become meaningless forms, reduced to impo- 
tence by the growth of royal autocracy. Only in England 
were there no provincial estates ; only in England were 
these assemblies from the first national and not pro- 
vincial in scope, and even in England there was at some 
moments a danger that they might be provincialised, as 
when Edward i. summoned separate meetings for the 
north and for the south. More important, only in 
England did the Estates develop into a real parliament, 
by becoming representative not merely of sharply 
defined castes or privileged classes {i.e. of estates in the 
strict sense), but of the whole community. 

For the second great defect of the Estates was that 
their members were definitely the representatives of 
legally organised and unalterable castes. In all countries 
save England the class of nobles or feudal landholders 
was sharply cut off from other classes, and was a strictly 
defined hereditary caste, all of whose descendants pos- 
sessed the privileges of nobility, which could be acquired 
by no one else except by special grant from the Crown. 



14 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

In England the lesser nobles, or minores iarones, were 
from an early date merged in the class of knights, most 
of whom were not ' barons ' or immediate tenants of 
the Crown ; and the class of knights in its turn was 
identified with the mass of ordinary landholders by the 
provision by which everybody possessing a certain 
amount of land, on whatever tenure, was required to 
assume the obligations of knighthood. Above all, the 
knights (whether minor barons or not) found their chief 
sphere of activity in that characteristic English institu- 
tion, the shire court, to which there is no real parallel 
in any other country ; and in the work of the shire 
court they mingled on more or less equal terms with 
the whole body of freemen who were entitled to attend 
it. So when the English national estates were first 
summoned, in the thirteenth century, it was not the 
minor barons who were asked to send representatives, 
but the shire courts, in which all landholders, however 
humble, might be present ; and the knights of the shire 
were from the first not representatives of a defined 
grade in the feudal hierarchy, but representatives of the 
' community ' of the shire. 

Nor were the boroughs sharply defined groups of 
privileged merchants, as in other countries. The boroughs 
also shared in the work of the shire court, to which they 
sent representatives. Most of them were very modest 
rural market towns, to whose trading rights the neigh- 
bouring landholders were very commonly freely ad- 
mitted. Their principal interest, the wool trade, was 
one in which the landholding class was equally con- 
cerned. And so it came about that there was no sharp 
distinction between the communities of the shires and 
the communities of the boroughs ; men of the knightly 
class could naturally be elected as representatives for 



MEDIEVAL ESTATES AND PARLIAMENT 15 

the boroughs ; and both groups could take their places 
side by side in a single House of Communes or Com- 
munities. Hence in place of two estates, an estate of 
minor barons and an estate of privileged merchants, each 
forming a sharply defined class, England developed a 
single parliamentary assembly, the members of which were 
not elected solely by members of their own class, but by 
the whole ' communities ' of the shire and the borough. 

Even in the other estates the same melting down of 
the lines of division between castes is to be seen. The 
clerical estate as a whole early ceased to take any part 
in the national parliament, preferring to maintain its 
own separate convocation, which dealt only with ecclesi- 
astical affairs ; and although the great churchmen sat 
in the House of Lords, they sat not solely as church- 
men, but largely as landholders. Finally, not even the 
greatest barons, who enjoyed hereditary seats in the 
House of Lords, formed a sharply defined caste as in 
other countries. In France, or Germany, or Italy all 
the sons of a Count were Counts, all the sons of a Baron 
Barons. In England the sons of the greatest nobles — 
even their eldest sons — were regarded by the law as 
commoners ; the rights of peerage, though hereditary, 
were purely personal ; younger sons and their descend- 
ants ranked with the knightly class, or might even drift 
into trade. Thus the caste system which grew out of 
feudalism in other countries never became really estab- 
lished in England ; and this made it possible for the 
Estates to develop rapidly into a genuine national 
parliament. The existence of a rigid and firmly estab- 
lished system of castes or classes in a country is, indeed, 
essentially incompatible with the effective working of 
popular representative government. It is possible that 
the caste system of social organisation may be the best 



16 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

for a given people, as Treitschke argued that it was the 
best for Germany ; but if that is so, and if the people 
habitually act as if it were so, the possibility of real 
popular government becomes very slight, for the accepted 
dominant castes will continue to control all power even 
if the forms of popular government are established. 

A third factor which especially favoured the develop- 
ment of a parliamentary system in England was the 
fact that throughout the later Middle Ages, when the 
strong monarchies of other countries were beginning to 
fight against feudal independence by putting trained 
administrators in control of local government, the 
English kings were getting all this work done for nothing 
by means of the Justices of the Peace, selected from among 
the country gentlemen. This meant, in the first place, 
that England was saved from the power of a highly 
organised and centralised bureaucracy, whose existence 
elsewhere formed a principal obstacle to the growth of 
national self-government ; it meant, in the second place, 
that if the central government desired to keep in touch 
with the needs and conditions of the country, it could 
best do so through Parliament, whose members were 
mostly occupied in this kind of work ; it meant, in the 
third place, that the men who came to these parlia- 
ments were, in a steadily increasing degree, men of prac- 
tical experience in government, not likely to be very 
unreasonable in their demands or claims. 

And lastly, England profited immensely from her 
insular position, which saved her from the constant fear 
or pressure of foreign attack — always the strongest 
motive for submission to a centralised autocracy. When 
the feudal organisation ceased to be used for purposes of 
national defence — and it broke down earlier in England 



MEDIEVAL ESTATES AND PARLIAMENT 17 

than elsewhere — the English kings did not need to 
resort to the expensive device of maintaining a profes- 
sional army. From the thirteenth century onwards, 
they trusted mainly to levies of ordinary freemen, raised 
by ' commissions of array,' and they found these methods 
adequate even for the purposes of foreign war. But 
this meant that they were largely dependent upon the 
support of the men who raised and led these troops, 
the country gentlemen. It meant also that, lacking a 
standing force of professional soldiers, they lacked the 
means for enforcing their own absolute authority. 
Without an organised army, and without a centralised 
bureaucracy, they had no alternative but to take the 
nation into partnership ; and on the whole the politically 
active part of the nation, the country gentlemen, were, 
thanks to their experience of local administration, not in- 
capable of playing their part in this partnership, especially 
in the happy freedom of England from foreign danger. 

For these reasons the English, alone among European 
peoples, developed a real parliamentary system out of 
the institution of Estates, a parliamentary system which 
was at once national and reasonably efficient in char- 
acter. Perhaps the nearest parallel to this English 
system was that of Hungary. But the Hungarian 
parliament was in fact a purely class assembly. It 
represented only the clearly defined caste of the nobles, 
whose numbers had risen to about two hundred thousand 
in the early nineteenth century, but who could in no 
sense speak even for the whole Magyar people, and still 
less for their subjects of other races. The history of self- 
government on the national scale has therefore been, 
throughout the greater part of the modern age, practically 
the history of English institutions. 

b 



Ill 

BRITISH SELF-GOVERNMENT IN THE 
MODERN AGE 

When the modern age opened, towards the end of the 
fifteenth century, the centralised monarchies of most of 
the European countries had reduced the feudal estates 
to a shadow and a form ; and despotism, supported by 
military strength and working through trained officials 
or ' bureaucrats,' had become the almost universally 
accepted form of government. The existence of a 
primitive democratic system in the rural simplicity of 
some of the Swiss cantons was too isolated a phenomenon 
to count for anything. A few independent city-states 
survived in Germany and Italy. But they had fallen 
under the control of oligarchies of merchants, frequently 
in conflict with the mass of their subjects, and cannot 
be said to have contributed anything to the growth of 
self-government. Their autonomy was indeed a barrier 
to the greater unity of the nation, and it was only in the 
completely disorganised nations of Germany and Italy 
that they survived : wherever the national idea was 
triumphant, the towns were inevitably reduced to sub- 
mission. Absolute monarchy had become the recog- 
nised mode of government in the world of Western 
civilisation, and during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and 
eighteenth centuries it everywhere steadily strengthened 
its authority, forcing to obedience every element in the 

18 



SELF-GOVERNMENT IN THE MODERN AGE 19 

state which could claim any independence, and en- 
larging the powers of its bureaucratic officials. For 
centralised monarchy gave unity, order, strength, and 
efficiency to the new great states with whom the destiny 
of Europe now lay. Even in England something ap- 
proaching to absolute monarchy in the direction of 
national affairs was willingly accepted by the nation 
after the turmoil of the Wars of the Roses ; and we are 
accustomed to give the name of ' the Tudor despotism ' 
to the system of government which carried England 
through the critical period of the sixteenth century. 

Nevertheless the phrase ' despotism ' is a misnomer 
for this system, and it is no paradox to say that England 
was, under the Tudor monarchy, the only self-governing 
country in the world. It is true that Henry vin. and 
Elizabeth directed national policy practically without 
parliamentary interference. But this was because the 
nation very fully trusted them, and because Parliament, 
which continued to meet and to approve all legislative 
and taxative proposals, did not feel itself competent to 
deal with the ' mysteries of statecraft,' with the problems 
of foreign policy or of ecclesiastical organisation. The 
Tudor monarchy rested upon consent as fully as any 
government that has ever existed ; it possessed, and it 
needed, no standing military force to impose its will ; it 
worked, for the most part, through Parliament, and if 
Tudor Parliaments were ' subservient,' this was because 
the sovereigns studied popular sentiment, and were care- 
ful not to lose touch with it. On the rare occasions 
when they did lose touch, they found Parliament no 
longer submissive, but they had the art of yielding 
gracefully without appearing to be defeated. 

Moreover, in almost everything except the direction 



20 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

of national policy, the England of the Tudors was in 
a quite remarkable degree a self-governing country. In 
the first place, the Rule of Law was well established. 
With rare exceptions no Englishman could be attacked 
in his life, liberty, or property otherwise than by process 
of law, and purely arbitrary authority was almost non- 
existent ; the officers of state were not above the ordinary 
law of the land, but were liable to be prosecuted in the 
ordinary courts for any illegal action ; and the enforce- 
ment of the law in detail rested largely in the hands 
of ordinary citizens — of unpaid country gentlemen or 
burghers acting as Justices of the Peace, of Juries 
of plain men whose verdict on the facts of a case 
was final, of unpaid village and hundred officers, 
bailiffs and constables, commonly chosen by their 
fellows. Not only the administration of justice but the 
control of the daily routine of government was in the 
hands of the people themselves. The mandates of the 
central government were addressed not, as in France, 
to a single paid professional administrator in each 
district, but to a group of unsalaried country gentlemen, 
the Justices of the Peace, whose houses and lands lay 
in the region which they administered, and who were 
the natural leaders of its society. It was the manifold 
experience in the business of government which the 
country gentlemen thus obtained which rendered pos- 
sible their activity in national affairs during the next 
age, and explained the eminently practical forms which 
this activity assumed. 

Nor were the country gentlemen the only class habitu- 
ated to co-operation in the management of common 
affairs. More than two hundred English boroughs 
enjoyed, in their Town Councils and their Assemblies 



SELF-GOVERNMENT IN THE MODERN AGE 21 

of Freemen, a quite remarkable degree of local autonomy. 
Craftsmen still combined to regulate their trades in 
common in their gilds. Wherever the old open-field 
system survived (and it survived over more than half 
of England) the body of villagers, now all freemen sub- 
ject to no real feudal ascendancy, combined to manage 
the co-operative agriculture of the village community, 
and to elect their reeves, haywards, moss-reeves, chimney- 
peepers, and so forth. In every parish the community 
was wont to meet at Easter to deal with a variety of 
common business, relating not only to the church, but 
to many other matters, such as parish charities, or the 
state of the local roads ; and when the great responsi- 
bility of relieving the poor was thrown upon the parishes, 
it was naturally and easily administered in detail by 
the more substantial yeomen, who were elected by the 
Vestry to serve without pay as overseers and church- 
wardens, and levied and spent the poor-rate under the 
supervision of the Justices of the Peace. In no country 
of Europe, at that time or at any other time, has the 
practice of self-government by means of discussion and 
agreement among ordinary citizens been more wide- 
spread ; in no country therefore had self-government 
become so ingrained a habit and instinct as it was 
in England. National affairs — foreign policy, church 
policy, defence, the regulation of foreign trade — the 
nation was very willing to leave in the hands of the 
king and his councillors, because it knew that it had 
an insufficient knowledge of these matters. But they 
were left to the king only so long as he possessed the 
trust of the nation, and particularly of its politically 
active element, the landed gentry. Here is the first 
and most notable feature of the development of popular 



22 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

government on the national scale in England : that it 
arose among a people already habituated through cen- 
turies to co-operation in the management of common 
affairs, already accustomed to the compromises and rough 
working arrangements which such co-operation renders 
necessary ; a people, therefore, not likely to be easily 
carried captive by sweeping theories, but always governed 
by considerations of immediate practical convenience. 

In the seventeenth century, while despotism was 
establishing itself more and more fully in all the con- 
tinental states, two remarkable developments illustrated 
and deepened the English passion for self-government. 

In the first place, the English, like the other peoples 
of western Europe, began to plant settlements in the 
new worlds disclosed by the great explorations. But, 
unlike the colonial ventures of Spain, Portugal, France 
and Holland, the new English settlements were not 
created by the purposive action of the national govern- 
ment ; they sprang from the activity of spontaneously 
formed groups, often quite unsupported, and sometimes 
even discouraged, by government. 1 Wherever the 
Englishman went, to the empty lands of North America 
or to the slave-worked plantations of the West Indies, 
he carried with him his ingrained habit of self-govern- 
ment ; he set up, as a matter of course, representative 
institutions to manage local affairs, though he still 
remained content that the home authorities should 
retain responsibility for foreign affairs, defence, and 
trade regulation. And the royal government at home — 
those very Stuart princes who have been represented as 
striving after absolute power — regarded these proceed- 

1 On early colonial self-government see The Expansion of Europe, 
chap. iii» 



SELF-GOVERNMENT IN THE MODERN AGE 23 

ings as entirely natural and proper, and never dreamt of 
placing restrictions upon them. Every English colony 
was self-governing from the first. No colony planted 
by any other European country ever received self- 
governing powers, not even those of the Dutch re- 
publicans. Nothing could more clearly show how deep- 
rooted was this English habit of self-government. In 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, apart from 
the Dutch and Swiss republics, the British lands were 
the only self-governing communities in the world. And 
self-government proved, in these new lands, to be an 
eminently satisfactory device. The superior prosperity 
of the British colonies is unquestionably to be attributed 
largely to their self-governing institutions. 

The second great development of the seventeenth 
century was that Parliament formally claimed to exercise 
a general control over national policy, such as it had 
never attempted in the sixteenth century ; and after 
long disputations, a civil war, and two revolutions, 
succeeded in establishing its claim. It was essentially 
the landowning class who exercised the supremacy thus 
won for Parliament. The great landowners filled the 
House of Lords ; their sons, and the lesser landowners, 
formed a majority of the House of Commons, represent- 
ing not only county but borough constituencies ; and 
the only other substantial elements of the nation who 
took part were the lawyers, mainly themselves belonging 
to the landowning class, and some of the small class of 
rich foreign merchants, who may be said to have been 
taken effectively into partnership in national govern 
ment towards the end of the seventeenth century. 
Though few in numbers, this class exercised a powerful 
influence through its control over great corporations 



24 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

like the East India Company and the Bank of England. 
In the management of these great concerns they had 
proved their capacity for governmental work, and they 
had special weight in determining the commercial and 
the foreign policy of the country during the eighteenth 
century. 

But essentially the supremacy of Parliament meant 
the supremacy of the landowning class, which lasted 
unshaken down to 1832. Hence the government of this 
period is sometimes spoken of as a ' landowning oligarchy.' 
But the phrase is as misleading as the phrase ' Tudor 
despotism.' As truly as the Tudor monarchy in the 
sixteenth century, the landowning aristocracy of the 
eighteenth century ruled Britain by consent. Britain 
was still predominantly an agricultural country, and a 
very large proportion of its population still possessed, 
until nearly the end of the eighteenth century, some 
proprietary interest in the soil which they cultivated. 
There was no legally recognised caste distinction separat- 
ing the politically dominant class from the rest ; the 
grades of rural society, the magnates and the squire- 
archy, the yeomanry and the peasantry, all free and 
equal before the law, shaded insensibly into one another, 
and there was no such obvious clash of economic interest 
between them as came about later, when the ownership 
of all the land fell into a few hands, when the peasantry 
became landless wage-earners, and the old independent 
yeomanry were merged in the class of farmers renting 
their land. In such a society the substantial land- 
owners were the natural leaders, and it was for this 
reason that members of this class were elected as a 
matter of course for the county constituencies, and 
were able to establish a controlling influence over th© 



SELF-GOVERNMENT IN THE MODERN AGE 25 

elections in the little rural market towns. Normally 
their ascendancy was undisturbed, though in a time of 
excitement, as in the election of 1784, the electors woke 
up to the exercise of their powers. The ascendancy of 
the landowning class, therefore, does not mean that 
England was a less self-governing country than she had 
been ; on the contrary, she was more so. The old 
machinery of local self-government went on more actively 
than ever, and it was now less closely controlled by the 
central government than it had been under the Tudors 
and Stuarts. One of the most interesting features of 
this period was the spontaneous development, especially 
in many of the large boroughs, of new machinery for the 
management of local affairs, created and worked by the 
townsmen themselves. 

When the supremacy of Parliament in the English 
system of government was established by the Revolution 
of 1689, it was not the intention of the leaders of the 
Revolution that Parliament should itself assume direct 
control over the executive government, or exercise the 
right of appointing or dismissing ministers. They in- 
tended to keep the two spheres of the executive and 
the legislature quite distinct. In the Act of Settlement 
they even provided that no paid servant of the Crown, 
that is to say, no minister of state, should be a member 
of the House of Commons, their fear being that the 
Crown might obtain an illicit control over Parliament 
by filling the House with placemen. Over the general 
policy of the executive they could be sure of exercising 
control. In the first place, they had the power of with- 
holding supplies, and therefore of making impossible the 
continuance of any government of which they disap- 
proved. In the second place, by the simple device of 



26 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

making the Mutiny Act annual, they brought the small 
standing army, which was now seen to be necessary, 
under their control. ' The question by which to decide 
the essential character of a state/ says the Prussian 
Professor Delbriick, with penetrating shrewdness, ' is 
the question, Whom does the army obey ? ' From the 
Revolution of 1689 onwards the English army ultimately 
obeyed, and depended upon, Parliament. But though the 
leaders of the Revolution had thus shrewedly ensured the 
ultimate sovereignty of Parliament over national policy, 
in the detailed carrying out of this policy they did not 
intend to meddle, but to leave it to the king and his 
chosen ministers. Their only regular method of calling 
ministers to account was the cumbrous method of 
Impeachment. In short, they adhered to the theory 
of ' division of powers,' the theory that legislature and 
executive should be generally independent of one another, 
each in its defined sphere. And in theory this con- 
tinued to be the law of the constitution throughout the 
eighteenth century : it is so, in strict law, even to-day. 
Montesquieu found in the British system the best illus- 
tration of his doctrine that ' division of powers ' is the 
greatest safeguard of liberty ; and the makers of the 
American constitution, when they incorporated this 
principle in their system, believed that they were follow- 
ing the British model. 

In fact, however, Parliament assumed the most direct 
control over the executive government, and the exercise 
of this control came to be its most prominent feature. 
The way in which this was brought about forms one of 
the most curious features of British constitutional de- 
velopment. The English governing class was divided 
into two acutely hostile parties. One of these, the 



SELF-GOVERNMENT IN THE MODERN AGE 27 

Whigs, who were probably the weaker in numbers, but 
much the stronger in wealth and influence, constituted 
themselves the special guardians of the Revolution 
Settlement, which they regarded as their own work ; 
and in order to ensure it against destruction, they skil- 
fully secured to themselves a complete control over the 
instruments of government. By all kinds of methods, 
corrupt and otherwise, they obtained a steady majority 
in the House of Commons ; the House of Lords they 
already controlled ; and, persuading the helpless and 
puzzled German kings that they were their only friends, 
they took possession also of all the powers and patron- 
age of the Grown. Almost disregarding the king, they 
settled all matters of public policy in a secret conclave 
or Cabinet Council of their own leaders ; and they 
ensured their position by cultivating and nursing the 
House of Commons. The management of Parliament 
became one of the principal functions of ministers, and 
so the practice grew up that the leading ministers of 
state must be members of one or other house of Parlia- 
ment ; the prohibition of the Act of Settlement having 
previously been got rid of, before it came into operation, 
by an Act of 1707. 

Thus it was the political necessities of an oligarchic 
clique which led to the creation of the most distinctive 
and peculiar feature of British parliamentary govern- 
ment : the centralised control of executive government 
by a compact cabinet of ministers, and the dependence 
of this cabinet upon a party majority in the House of 
Commons. Devised for an immediate purpose, this 
system — which no political philosopher could ever have 
deliberately invented — was proved by experience to be 
eminently workable. It brought the executive under 



28 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

the effective control of Parliament, laid ministers open 
to daily and searching parliamentary criticism, and 
ultimately established the usage that they must resign 
as soon as they no longer possessed the support of a 
parliamentary majority. At the same time it ensured 
coherence and stability in the conduct of government, 
because the Cabinet could nearly always depend upon 
the support of its followers, so long as it was careful to 
avoid measures likely to offend them ; and coherence 
and stability are just the qualities which it would seem 
all but impossible to secure under the control of two 
large, unwieldy, and shifting assemblies. 

Ever since its first development, the party-cabinet 
system of government has been at intervals the object 
of bitter criticism. In its eighteenth-century form it 
was very effectively attacked in Bolingbroke's Patriot 
King. George ni., largely inspired by Bolingbroke's 
ideas, resolved to destroy the influence of party, and to 
restore the crown to the position intended for it by the 
authors of the Revolution Settlement — the position of 
an impartial arbiter calling to the direction of national 
affairs the best available men from all sides. He suc- 
ceeded in breaking up the old Whig party. With the 
aid of the elder Pitt, he succeeded in 1766 in forming a 
non-party ministry, which included many of the ablest 
men then engaged in politics. The result was a period 
of the worst humiliation and disaster that England has 
ever known ; and, beyond a doubt, the main reason 
for these misfortunes was that the direction of affairs 
was in the hands of a group of men who had no principles 
in common and no habitude of working together. In 
the end, after America had been lost, the party-cabinet 
system was restored finally in 1784, and it has remained 



SELF-GOVERNMENT IN THE MODERN AGE 20 

the main motive force in British politics ever since. 
Indeed, it seems to form the only system whereby parlia- 
mentary control of the executive can be made effective. 
It has been adopted in all the British colonies, and, to 
a greater or less degree, in most of the continental states. 
There are only two alternatives to it. One is that of 
a coalition of shifting groups, which involves log-rolling 
and corruption. The other is the rigid ' division of 
powers,' and the freeing of the executive from parlia- 
mentary control ; but even this system, as the case of 
America shows, will normally pass under the sway of 
party division where the electorate directly appoints 
the head of the executive in place of Parliament, and 
it is only where the executive is largely independent of 
all public control, as in Germany, that the dominance 
of party can be restrained. 

We have spent, perhaps, an unduly large amount of 
space in tracing in outline the growth of the British 
system. Yet before the outbreak of the American and 
the French Revolutions, the history of the British system 
(at home or in the daughter-lands) is in effect the history 
of self-government in the world. We have seen that 
this system was the result of a slow growth, never the 
product of theory or deliberate invention. It derived 
its strength from the fact that self-government in the 
lesser sphere of local affairs had become a deeply rooted 
instinct and habit of the whole nation ; yet the whole 
nation did not share in the direct control of national 
affairs during the pre-revolutionary period, but was 
content to leave it in the hands of those classes in the 
population who had the most direct and varied experi- 
ence of public affairs, the landed gentry, the lawyers, 
and the great foreign merchants. But we have seen 



30 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

also that this was possible because that governing class 
did, in the pre-revolutionary period, genuinely represent 
the interests and ideas of the nation as a whole, so far 
as these were vocal ; and was, in spite of the corruption 
of the electoral machinery, in a real degree in contact 
with popular opinion. 

While the mechanism of parliamentary government 
was being invented in England, on the continent of 
Europe despotism had everywhere reached its apogee. 
The splendour of Louis xrv. in France had been followed 
by the feebleness and corruption of Louis xv. Yet in 
spite of this, most of the political thinkers who distin- 
guished this age pinned their faith to absolute monarchy, 
believing that it was only from an enlightened monarch 
that the resolute pursuit of great reforms could be ex- 
pected. And the preaching of the philosophers pro- 
duced, in a most remarkable way, a generation of 
philosopher-kings. Nearly every European state was 
governed, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, 
by a ruling prince or a minister who showed a genuine 
enthusiasm for reform ; and it must be admitted that 
the country gentlemen of England, arguing about 
Middlesex elections and duties on tea, present, on the 
surface, a very poor contrast to the strenuous reforming 
labours of a Leopold of Tuscany, a Joseph n., a Frederick 
the Great. It is not surprising that to that generation, 
in view of the achievements of these rulers, it appeared 
that the future belonged to enlightened despotism served 
by highly trained and devoted bureaucrats. Govern- 
ment by discussion seemed to lead to mere chaos ; to 
be ruled by the stupidity of average men seemed mere 
folly. It was her attachment to her fatal ' liberties ' 
that had brought ruin on Poland ; and England, with 



SELF-GOVERNMENT IN THE MODERN AGE U 

her unceasing party wranglings, amid which no work 
was done, seemed to Frederick the Great to be ' a sort 
of island Poland.' Certainly England saw no such fever 
of constructive work as was going on in many continental 
states during these years. Unfortunately very little of 
all this work had any permanent effect ; and the reason 
for its failure was simply that the Benevolent Despots 
wholly disregarded the sentiments and desires of their 
subjects. 

' I am the first servant of my people,' said Frederick 
the Great ; if so, he was a servant of the old-fashioned 
type that knows far better than his masters what is 
good for them, and insists upon their having it, whether 
they like it or not. But in truth Frederick's famous 
phrase does not really describe his own view of the 
royal function. He and the other Benevolent Despots 
laboured, indeed, untiringly to improve their dominions : 
they fostered agriculture and industry, they created 
academies of science, they revised and codified the laws, 
they carried out great public works. But they were 
labouring — or at any rate Frederick was labouring — not 
so much for the welfare of his own subjects as for the 
creation of a powerful State. He was the architect of 
the future Great State, his subjects only the bricks and 
mortar. It was necessary that they should be numerous, 
so as to fill the ranks of a conquering army, and pros- 
perous, so as to support its burden ; it was important 
that the Great State should be fully equipped with all 
the resources of modern knowledge, both for practical 
purposes and for prestige. But the State did not exist 
for the sake of the people ; the people existed for the 
sake of the State. They must not presume to form 
opinions and preferences of their own ; it was theirs 



82 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

to be used by the King-Architect for such purposes and 
according to such plans as he might desire. Let them 
be educated ; they will be more useful so ; but let their 
education impress upon them the duty of obedience, 
and the privilege of being a Great King's implements 
in the building of a Great State. For the State is 
omnipotent ; the people only the clay out of which it 
is formed. Such was the real conception of Enlightened 
Despotism and its aims, at the moment when it reached 
its highest development, on the eve of the French 
Revolution. It was nowhere more clearly grasped, or 
more efficiently put into operation, than by Frederick 
of Prussia (1740-1786). 

Now this conception of the meaning and aims of the 
State was fundamentally the opposite of the conception 
implied in the system of self-government which the 
English had been slowly, and more or less instinctively, 
working out during these last centuries. The average 
Englishman, and even the ablest of politicians, did not 
trouble much about theories. But if you had asked an 
eighteenth -century Englishman what was the function 
of the State, he would assuredly have answered, that 
its chief end was to protect the liberties which his ances- 
tors had acquired for him, to ensure him freedom to 
think and say and do whatever he liked, so long as he 
did not injure his neighbours ; and this freedom he 
certainly possessed in a greater degree than the citizens 
of any other European state. He would have told you 
(had he ever thought about such matters) that the State 
was simply the machinery whereby the people contrived 
to manage in common and by mutual agreement all 
those matters which required such determination. He 
would have said that the less the State meddled with 



SELF-GOVERNMENT IN THE MODERN AGE 33 

him and controlled his actions, the better. He might 
have added that the fact of partnership in the manage- 
ment of common affairs, and the sense of joint responsi- 
bility, was something almost essential to the realisation 
of his own manhood. He would not as yet have risen 
to the idea of the State as a great partnership of the 
community for the sake of making the best of life, for 
this conception did not come to birth until the next 
century. But if you had invited his assent to the 
Prussian doctrine that the State is everything, and the 
individual nothing, that the citizen has no rights at all 
against the State, and that it is his highest glory to be 
used for the increase of the State's greatness, he would 
have repudiated your suggestion with laughter, telling 
you that he was not a slave, that the essence of the 
State was Law, and that the purpose of Law was to 
protect him and his fellows in the enjoyment of their 
rights and liberties, the rights and the liberties that 
made it a glorious thing to be an Englishman. 

Perhaps we have put our eighteenth-century English- 
man's statement a little more definitely, and in a rather 
more modern form, than he would himself have put it. 
But our object has been to bring out in a simple way the 
antithesis between the two ideas of the state which had 
resulted from the slow development of centuries in 
England and on the continent of Europe, and which 
already stood forth in pretty clear contrast before the 
outbreak of the American and the French Revolutions. 
But already these tremendous upheavals were pre- 
paring ; and with their trumpet-like proclamation of the 
sweeping and uncompromising doctrines of Liberty, a 
new era in the history of self-government began. 



IV 

THE ERA OF REVOLUTION AND THE DOGMAS 
OF LIBERTY 

Three nations — the British, the American, and the 
French — have mainly contributed to the establishment 
of national self-government as a vital element in the 
life of Western civilisation. The contribution of Britain 
was the gradual development of the machinery of self- 
government, and of the social habits which made the 
working of that machinery possible. But this British 
achievement was never regarded by its half-conscious 
creators as a model for the rest of the world, or as the 
expression of doctrines of universal application. Rather 
it was regarded as something peculiarly British, as an 
inherited national privilege. This notion of inheritance 
was indeed a fundamental element in most British 
political thought before the nineteenth century. It was 
expounded with a sort of mystical fervour by Burke. 
Far from contending that the British system was one 
which other nations would be wise to imitate, Burke 
went to the opposite extreme, and almost maintained 
that political liberty could scarcely exist in any nation 
which had not inherited it ; and his advice to the French 
was that they should make the best of their own in- 
herited traditions, and avoid the blunder of striving 
after a theoretical ideal. This irritating and peculiarly 
British attitude was maintained far into the period 



REVOLUTION AND DOGMAS OF LIBERTY 35 

when parliamentary institutions were becoming common 
among the Western peoples. It is implicit in Bagehot's 
able but self-complacent analysis of the working of the 
British system, published as late as 1868. A system so 
peculiarly national, so little based upon theories of right, 
could scarcely have aroused the enthusiasm of other 
peoples, though it might have awakened their envy ; and 
the universal Western movement towards national self- 
government might never have taken place, and would 
certainly never have been capable of arousing the pas- 
sionate hope and faith which it enlisted in the nineteenth 
century, if an impetus of a wholly different character 
had not been given to it, first by the distant spectacle 
of the American Revolution, and then, far more directly, 
by the revolutionary ardour of the French people. No 
doubt both of these great events derived their character 
in part from British influences : the Americans, when 
they declared their independence, were only carrying to 
a logical conclusion the principles they had learnt from 
their British ancestors ; and most of the philosophers 
whose work determined the character of the French 
Revolution had based their theories largely upon the 
study of the British system. But America and France 
introduced new contributions of their own, of such im- 
portance as to make this age of revolutions a new starting- 
point in human history. 

The American Revolution x forms in some sense a 
transition between the practical unidealist growth of 
British institutions and the glorious impracticable dreams 
of the French apostles of liberty. On the one hand, it 
was based upon tradition. The American colonists had 

1 Other aspects of the American Revolution are discussed in 
The Expansion of Europe, chap. iv. 



36 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

enjoyed self-government on a generous scale from the 
very first ; they possessed the habit and the instinct of 
self-government — it was the most precious thing they 
brought from Britain ; they fought not as slaves striving 
after liberty, but as free men who had already practised 
it and were resolved to achieve its fulfilment ; and they 
argued their case precisely in the same temper as the 
Englishmen of the seventeenth century, basing their 
claims upon law, precedent, and inherited rights. The 
institutions which they set up were, for the most part, 
no new-fangled experiments ; in all their main features 
they were based upon their own experience and upon 
that of the Motherland, and where they blundered it 
was through misinterpreting this experience, or stepping 
aside from the path of precedent. 

On the other hand, owing to the conditions of a new 
land, they had been from the first far more democratic 
than it was possible for the mother country to be, with 
all her load of tradition and custom. The American 
colonists were, indeed, before the actual breach, already 
the only fully democratic communities in the modern 
world ; and they seemed to embody and to justify in 
practice all the democratic theories that were in that 
generation fermenting in the mind of Europe. When 
they had won their independence, and wrought out their 
new system of government, they stood before the world 
as the first completely free and democratic nation-state 
which had ever existed in human history. Naturally 
they welcomed and adopted the phrases of the philoso- 
phers which seemed so directly to refer to their own 
circumstances, and incorporated them in the primary 
documents of their new state. And having done so, 
they became doctrinaires of liberty, like the French, as 



REVOLUTION AND DOGMAS OF LIBERTY 3? 

well as habitual practitioners of it, like the British. 
Moreover, their success seemed to demonstrate the truth 
of the democratic doctrine, which had, as yet, been 
nowhere else put in operation. For here was a society 
where all men were free and all equal ; and in this 
society there was almost no poverty, and no great 
wealth, but an extraordinary diffusion of prosperity. 
The prosperity, of course, came from the virgin wealth 
and the inexhaustible spaces of a new world ; the social 
equality was mainly due to the same cause ; the political 
liberty was an inherited gift, rendered habitual by long 
practice. But it was natural that both the Americans 
themselves and their European admirers should attribute 
their well-being wholly to their freedom, and date their 
freedom from their revolt against George in. Thus the 
success of the great American experiment contributed 
to establish the theory that all that was necessary for 
the realisation of human felicity was to set up the insti- 
tutions of democratic self-government, without regard 
to the questions whether the people for whom they 
were created had obtained the training which would 
enable them to use them well, or whether they were 
sufficiently united to co-operate easily in the work of 
government by discussion. 

Yet the experience of the Americans themselves threw 
a most instructive light upon the importance of these 
conditions for the working of selt-government. The 
general standard of education among them was probably 
higher than in any country save Scotland ; they had 
been habituated to self-government since the beginning 
of their history, and thus enjoyed, in respect to train- 
ing, advantages which were not likely to be equalled in 
any other country. They were also linked by many 



58 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

unifying forces. They were mostly descended from the 
same stocks ; they spoke the same language and read 
the same books ; they were dominated by the same 
moral ideas, and accustomed to work the same civil 
institutions ; and they had faced in common the same 
dangers. Yet because they had long been organised in 
thirteen distinct states, each jealous of its independent 
rights, they found it extremely difficult to come to an 
agreement as to the form and powers of their common 
government ; and after their independence had been 
secured, five years of argument passed before they were 
able to establish their federal system. When it was 
completed this system was marked by certain features 
which must have made it unworkable among any people 
who did not possess an inexhaustible fund of political 
capacity, public spirit, and good sense ; perhaps even 
these qualities would not have saved it if America had 
not been preserved by her geographical position from 
all serious danger of foreign complications. 

In the first place, because of the jealousies of the 
thirteen states, the federal constitution ultimately had 
to take the form of a sort of treaty between these states, 
which could not be varied in any particular without the 
consent of large majorities in at least two-thirds of the 
states. This meant that the constitution was practi- 
cally unalterable ; and the new republic started with 
the most rigid and inelastic constitution which has ever 
existed in the world. The constitution was in itself a 
wise and generous document. But not the wisest and 
most far-seeing of men could anticipate all the problems 
of the future. A single instance may suffice to illustrate 
the effects of this rigidity. The constitution provided 
(in what seemed an unexceptionable clause, based upon 



REVOLUTION AND DOGMAS OF LIBERTY 3d 

Magna Charta) that no citizen might be deprived of his 
property otherwise than by process of law. The time 
came when the government of the United States decided 
that it was necessary to levy an income tax. But to 
levy an income tax is, in fact, to take a part of every 
taxable citizen's property ; and the Act of Congress by 
which the tax was imposed could not be described as 
a process of law. So the Supreme Court held that the 
constitution forbade the levying of an income tax. And 
no income tax could be, or was, levied until two- 
thirds of the separate states had decided by majorities 
of three to one to accept an alteration of the constitu- 
tion for this purpose ! Naturally, such an agreement 
was very difficult to attain, and the levying of income 
tax was postponed for years. There could be no more 
pointed illustration of the danger of laying down un- 
alterable rules for the future, and of the snares that 
beset men when they try to manufacture a system of 
government for a living and growing society. 

Again, the mutual jealousy of the states (which is 
another way of saying the incomplete unity of senti- 
ment in the nation) necessitated a strict definition of 
the spheres of the federal and the state governments. 
Broadly speaking, certain general functions were allotted 
to the central government, but all the undefined residue 
of power remained with the states. This meant that 
common action for the whole nation was made extremely 
difficult in every sphere which was not actually foreseen 
by the framers of the constitution. They could not 
foresee the complex economic system of the twentieth 
century, or the vast power which was to fall into the 
hands of organised finance. But, as we to-day realise, 
these things demand a firm control by the organs of 



40 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

state. And America has found herself seriously handi- 
capped in establishing this control by the inelastic 
provisions of her eighteenth-century constitution. The 
abounding prosperity of the country has made these 
defects less apparent than they would have been in an 
older society ; the ingenuity, good sense, and modera- 
tion of the American mind have found ways of partially 
escaping from the difficulty. But it remains true that 
the constitutional restrictions upon the power of the 
nation as a whole to deal with its problems on a national 
scale have created difficulties in the past, and are likely 
to lead to greater difficulties in the future. 

Finally, dominated by the distrust of ' government ' 
as such which was characteristic of eighteenth-century 
thought, and deeply influenced by the political theorists 
of France, especially Montesquieu, the framers of the 
American constitution endeavoured to draw a sharp 
distinction between the main departments of govern- 
ment — the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, 
— and to secure to each independence within its own 
sphere. This was in accordance with the theory of 
Montesquieu (based upon a misreading of the British 
system) that in such a ' division of powers ' is to be 
found the only effective safeguard of liberty. Hence it 
was provided that the President, as head of the Executive, 
should be chosen every four years by an electoral college, 
whose members should in turn be directly elected by 
the whole people, and, once elected, the President was to 
be irremovable during his period of office. The Presi- 
dent's powers were modelled on the supposed powers of 
the Crown in Britain. He was to be responsible for the 
whole conduct of executive affairs ; he was to appoint 
all executive officers, who were to be responsible solely 



REVOLUTION AND DOGMAS OF LIBERTY 41 

to him, and not to the representative body, of which 
they were not even to be members. While he was for- 
bidden to declare war without the assent of the legis- 
lature, he was left free to pursue a policy which would 
make war inevitable ; and when war once began he 
was endowed with practically absolute power over all 
the forces of the State. This system made it impossible, 
even in a moment of acute national crisis, to get rid of 
an unsuitable or incompetent chief, who might have 
been elected on quite minor issues. It forced the nation 
to wait for the close of the four years' term to make 
any change, and then to go through the turmoil of an 
election in order to make it. And it inevitably weakened 
criticism during the period of presidential office ; because 
criticism could lead to no practical result, and because 
there was no means of forcing the executive government 
to any complete revelation of its programme. Again, 
the function of making new laws was reserved to the 
legislature, though the President could veto laws which he 
disapproved, and the Supreme Court of Justice could make 
them inoperative by declaring them unconstitutional. 
This meant that the function of law-making was entrusted 
to a body which had no responsibility for carrying out the 
laws which it made, and which was therefore tempted to 
court popularity by irresponsible legislation ; while the 
executive government, which often alone knows from 
experience where the shoe pinches, and what practical 
remedies are likely to be efficient, was in theory debarred 
from initiating legislative projects. The legislature, like 
the executive, was irremovable during its term of office ; 
there was no device like that of dissolution in the British 
system for referring a deadlock to popular decision. 
Such a system incurred the danger of sharp conflict 



42 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

between the two separate powers, which might dislocate 
the national government at the most critical moments : 
the irremovable President might be unable to get neces- 
sary laws passed, or necessary money voted, and he 
would have no remedy and no appeal ; the irremovable 
Congress might be convinced that the President's policy 
was ruining the country, but it could do nothing. The 
truth is, of course, that Montesquieu's plausible doctrine 
of the division of powers is utterly unsound. The 
functions of government cannot be rigidly divided. The 
executive is in most cases the best initiator of legislation, 
because it usually knows best what legislation is needed. 
But every executive, whether popularly elected or not, 
needs to be brought under control, and to be subjected to 
unresting and well-informed criticism. The true function 
of a representative body is that of control, from which 
the American Congress was expressly debarred ; for while 
a representative body cannot itself carry on the details of 
government, it also cannot, as a rule, profitably draft 
new laws without the guidance of executive experience. 
Its business ought to be to ensure that the right men are 
endowed with executive power, that they use it in the 
right way, that they are encouraged to propose the right 
kind of legislation, and that all their proposals and those 
of others are sanely criticised from every point of view 
before being put into operation. Experience seems to 
justify us in asserting that it is by the concentration of 
responsibility for the direction of public affairs under 
the control and criticism of an active and well-informed 
body of popular representatives that popular control of 
government is likely to be most efficiently exercised. 

Now the Americans, dominated by abstract theories, 
had in their federal constitution departed unwittingly 



REVOLUTION AND DOGMAS OF LIBERTY 43 

from this principle, and had given their weighty en- 
dorsement to the dangerous doctrine of the separation 
of the executive from the legislature ; a doctrine which, 
as we shall see, was to work great havoc in the develop- 
ment of self-governing institutions. In practice, how- 
ever, they very soon, though quite unconsciously, threw 
this theory overboard, and found a means of at any 
rate partially reconciling the executive and legislative 
functions, so far as the constitution allowed. The 
means by which this was done was the organisation of 
political parties which rapidly gained control both over 
the President and over the Congress. Every President 
became a party nominee, and either dictated his party's 
programme, or submitted to it, knowing that he could 
get no support if his party threw him over. Every 
Congress consisted of declared party men, and thus it 
was possible for the President, acting through the chief 
members of his own party in Congress, to get the neces- 
sary laws and taxes proposed ; he thus did informally what 
a British Prime Minister does openly and publicly, and 
assumed a general responsibility for national policy. But 
the drawbacks of the system were that the public control 
and criticism of government could only be made fully effec- 
tive at intervals of four years, and that, in the intervals, 
they were exercised not by the open discussions of Con- 
gress so much as by the private arrangements of a party 
machine. This is not a very satisfactory method. Yet it 
formed the only mode by which the inherent defects of 
the system of division of powers could be even partially 
overcome without defying the unalterable constitution. 
The unqualified dominion of party in America is thus in 
part due to the defects of the American constitution. 
The comparative indifference of large sections of the 






44 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

American public to political issues is largely due to the 
fact that their activity is (except during elections) unable 
to effect anything against the irremovable President, 
the indissoluble Congress, and the irresponsible party 
organisations that pull the strings behind the scenes. 

We have dwelt at some length upon the American 
system, and even anticipated its later development, 
because it was the first great experiment in the deliberate 
organisation of a national system of democratic govern- 
ment, and because its defects, as well as its merits, are 
full of instruction. In spite of the drawbacks which we 
have analysed, it did very fully succeed in securing the 
control of national affairs by the national will ; because 
among an educated, law-abiding, and public -spirited 
people, long habituated, as the Americans were, to 
participation in public affairs, and enjoying the most 
complete freedom of thought, speech, and publication, 
no President, no Congress, and no party caucus dare 
venture to override the manifest will of the people. But 
if these qualities had been lacking, or if America had not 
been saved from the dangers and complexities of close 
association with other states, we may well doubt whether 
the defects of the system would not have produced 
unhappy results. It was a noble experiment in the 
organisation of freedom, and a stirring challenge to the 
old world. But it did not, any more than the British 
system of the eighteenth century, afford a model which 
other communities could safely attempt to reproduce. 
For if the main features of the American system had 
been imitated in other lands whose citizens were less 
educated, less habituated to the compromises of public 
affairs, and less free from foreign dangers, the result 
must have been mere confusion. The American system, 



REVOLUTION AND DOGMAS OF LIBERTY 45 

therefore, while it has afforded a stimulus to the demand 
for political liberty in other lands, has only in a very 
slight degree influenced the forms in which this demand 
has found satisfaction ; all the more because America 
has deliberately and systematically held herself aloof 
from the concerns of the rest of the world during almost 
the whole of her history as an independent state. 

Although, therefore, the achievements of both Britain 
and America have contributed indirectly in a very 
powerful degree to the growth of self-government in the 
rest of the world, it is in another quarter that we must 
seek the source of that eager zeal for political liberty 
which was to captivate and transform Europe during 
the nineteenth century. It was the French who turned 
the idea of self-government from a practical device, 
operative only among those whose history had trained 
them to use it, into a reasoned belief which could inspire 
among those who held it the self-sacrificing fervour, and 
also the ruthlessness, of religious fanaticism. 

Prince Billow, meaning to be contemptuous, has said 
of the French that this strange people are capable of 
sacrificing to an idea even their material prosperity. It 
is a tribute of which the French may well be proud. 
For throughout their history it has been the secret of 
the undying fascination and power of this great nation 
that they have been not only willing to spend themselves 
for an idea, but able to communicate to other peoples 
something of their own divine frenzy. They have never 
done so to greater purpose, or with nobler results, than 
in the great revolutionary movement which they in- 
spired and guided. It is true that all the blood 
and fury of these years did not immediately lead to 
the establishment of an orderly system of national 



46 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

self-government either in France itself, or in any other 
state. But they created and spread abroad through 
Europe the seeds of that divine discontent which was 
to shake down everywhere the old regime, and to bring 
about the universal acceptance of the ideal of political 
liberty ; and from that point of view our theme de- 
mands that we should dwell for a little, though only in 
general terms, upon some of the broad features of the 
great upheaval. 

The bankruptcy of the despotic regime in eighteenth- 
century France was due broadly to three causes : to the 
degeneration which inevitably overtakes an irresponsible 
monarchy ; to the ruinous privileges of legally recog- 
nised castes, which had ceased to be able to render even 
the services of competent military leadership which they 
had earlier supplied ; and to the growing inefficiency of 
a once competent but now routine-ridden bureaucracy. 
The protest against the disorganisation brought about 
by these causes was expressed mainly by men of letters 
and philosophers ; and for that reason, and also because 
there seemed to be no vitality in any of the surviving 
institutions of France, it took the form, not of definite 
and measurable projects of reform, but, first, of an analysis 
of the nature and aims of human society at large, and, 
secondly, of a series of bold and unqualified doctrines, 
not relating solely to the circumstances of France, but 
claiming a universal validity. 

From the teaching of Rousseau, especially, came the 
dream and ideal of the democratic state : the assertion 
of the inherent and inalienable sovereignty of the people, 
and of the inherent and inalienable Rights of Man. The 
theory of the equality of men in the state of nature, 
^hich Rousseau, like others, borrowed from Grotius and 



REVOLUTION AND DOGMAS OF LIBERTY 47 

the Roman jurists, was not for him, as it was for them, 
simply a convenient juridical formula, nor was it merely 
a postulate at the basis of a body of artificial theory. 
For Rousseau, and for his readers, it was a poignant 
assertion that human societies had gone fatally astray. 
Organised society exists, according to Rousseau, in 
order that its members may enjoy in security, to the 
maximum practicable degree, the rights which in a 
hypothetical state of nature must always be precarious ; 
and the essence of these rights is the power to make the 
best of one's own life on equal terms with other men. 
But society has been distorted from this, its true end : 
it has been made the means for the exploitation of the 
mass of men by the few. ' Men are born equal, and 
they are everywhere in chains ' : nor will they regain 
their rights, which society theoretically exists to secure, 
until society has been reconstituted in such a way as 
genuinely to embody the inexpugnable but disregarded 
truth of the Sovereignty of the People. ' Government of 
the people, by the people, for the people,' in Lincoln's 
phrase, is the only mode by which men can be enabled 
to live as Nature meant them to, in freedom, equality 
and brotherhood ; and they are robbed of an essential 
part of their manhood if they are deprived of their just 
share in the control of their common destiny. 

It is no part of our purpose here to analyse or criticise 
the doctrines of Rousseau, which, indeed, were much 
less uncompromising than they were made to appear 
by many of his disciples. What concerns us is that out 
of these doctrines could be drawn a political gospel which 
was full of inspiration, and which seemed to afford the 
hope of a glowing future for humanity. These ideas 
worked powerfully upon the mind of a nation that has 



48 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

always rejoiced in ideas and that had been for centuries 
cut off from practical contact with politics. And they 
seemed to be justified in practice in the New World, 
where Frenchmen, from 1778 to 1782, were helping the 
revolting American colonists to establish the first com- 
plete democracy that ever existed in the world. Liberty, 
not merely of the half-hearted, traditional British 
pattern, but on the scale of full-fledged democracy, 
existed successfully in America, and it seemed to have 
brought happiness : why should it not exist, and bring 
happiness, elsewhere ? 

When in 1789 the French government, on the verge 
of bankruptcy, resolved in despair to take the people 
into consultation, and summoned the States -general 
after an interval of one hundred and seventy-five years, 
the moment seemed to have come when these aspirations 
could be realised ; and with a sort of sober joy, the whole 
nation set itself to take full advantage of the opportunity, 
and to establish in France the reign of Justice and Liberty. 
In all history there is no moment more touching and more 
inspiring than this, when nearly all classes and sections 
of a great people, almost forgetting for the moment 
their conflicting interests, and all dominated by the 
same glorious if elusive vision, set to work upon the 
reconstruction of their social and political system in 
pursuit of a great ideal. ' Tears of joy flowed from my 
eyes,' said an unemotional conservative Marquis on the 
occasion of the meeting of the States-general. ' My 
God, my country, and my fellow-citizens had become 
myself.' ' Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,' the 
English poet felt ; and the thrill of a great emotion 
passed from France into all the neighbouring lands — 
into Belgium, into Germany, into Italy, into England, 



REVOLUTION AND DOGMAS OF LIBERTY 49 

and made the tinkerings of benevolent despots and of 
practical politicians appear to be extraordinarily trivial 
and unreal. Despite the outbursts of turbulence which 
accompanied the Revolution from the first, this fine 
emotion lasted in its purity for fully two years. It 
enabled France to create the first sketch, at any rate, 
of a State conceived as an embodiment of liberty, frater- 
nity, and equality ; and it made upon the hearts and 
consciences of all Europe an impression which remained 
indelible, and which not even the horrors of the Reign 
of Terror, and the militarist frenzy which followed it, 
were able wholly to obliterate. Shallow and doctrinaire 
as the theories of the Revolution may appear, the memory 
of this great national resolve to turn the State into an 
embodiment of justice, freedom and brotherhood re- 
mained, and will perhaps always continue to be, an 
inspiration to the sons of men ; and on the minds of 
that and the following generations it made an impres- 
sion far deeper than could have been created by the 
prosaic spectacle of the practical, unidealist British 
system. 

Three things the leaders of the Revolution set them- 
selves to do. In the first place, they embodied in a 
great document a declaration of human rights, and of 
the purposes which the well-ordered State should try 
to achieve ; and this, vague and unpractical as it was, 
formed a clear challenge to the conscience of civilisation, 
the echoes of which have not yet died out. It was the 
first time that the assertion of high moral ideals had 
been transferred from the philosopher's study to the 
dusty arena of politics. For Frenchmen in particular, 
but for the men of many other nations also, these phrases 
vague and indefinite as they are, have acquired a sort 

D 



50 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

of sacredness. They have never lost their power. They 
have, time and again, and to-day more fully than ever, 
inspired the sons of France to feel that they were striving 
not after the vulgarity of conquest or wealth, but after 
an ideal for humanity. 

In the second place, the Revolution at a single stroke 
swept away all privileges of caste and creed and province ; 
and this part of their work was permanent, so far, at 
any rate, as concerns the embodiment of these privileges 
in law. The famous session of the National Assembly 
in which part of this great achievement was effected, 
amid unrestrained emotion, by the voluntary renuncia- 
tion of many of the privileged themselves, has some- 
times been sneered at ; but the sneer is an unworthy one. 

Finally, the Revolution set up a complete system of 
democratic self-government, conceived in accordance 
with the ideas of philosophers who had enjoyed no 
experience in practical affairs. Not only was France 
henceforward to be equipped with a legislature ex- 
pressing the sovereignty of the people, but in every 
department also, and in every one of the forty thousand 
communes or townships of the country, fully organised 
representative government was to take the place of the 
unqualified bureaucratic control which had hitherto 
existed. Henceforward almost all officials performing 
public functions, even the bishops and priests, were to 
be chosen by the people. 

These changes were, of course, far too sudden and 
sweeping to have any chance of success among a people 
who had had no training whatever in the difficult art of 
managing common affairs by discussion and agreement. 
The immediate result was chaotic disorganisation ; and 
when the monarchs of Europe, alarmed at the growing 



REVOLUTION AND DOGMAS OF LIBERTY 51 

unrest among their own subjects, began to take up 
arms against the Revolution, the new-made institutions 
of self-government simply had to be swept aside. The 
management of local affairs passed once more into the 
hands of autocrats directed from Paris ; the control of 
national policy into the hands first of the Committee 
of Public Safety, later of the Directorate, then of the 
Consulate, finally of the Emperor ; and the representa- 
tive bodies which were still permitted to survive along- 
side of these controlling powers became weaker and 
weaker as time went on. Thus the Revolution failed to 
establish an organised control of the instruments of 
government by a body representative of the nation. 
Yet the fervour of belief in the democratic idea never 
died out. It seemed to be only the pressure of war 
which had rendered necessary the temporary super- 
session of the institutions of liberty. But the essential 
boon of equality before the law survived, even if the 
forms of self-government were weakened. The electrify- 
ing power of liberty was demonstrated by the extra- 
ordinary outburst of patriotic fervour which enabled 
France in 1793 to thrust back her invading enemies on 
all sides, and to pursue them into their own territories, 
where their subjects were eager to welcome the emanci- 
pators. France, feeling herself the chosen champion of 
Liberty, proclaimed a great crusade on behalf of all 
peoples and against all kings, and the ideal of self- 
government became — what it had never been in its 
British or even in its American form — a challenge to 
every constituted government which did not recognise 
and embody the sovereignty of the people. 

Even when, under Napoleon, France had become a 
conquering militarist empire, imposing its yoke upon 



52 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

half Europe, this apostolic fervour did not disappear. 
Even Napoleon brought to the lands he conquered the 
incalculable boon of equal and rational laws, based upon 
a disregard of the distinctions of caste. And Napoleon's 
soldiers and his agents were still the apostles of the 
democratic idea. Wherever they went they left behind 
them the seeds of liberty, and even their enemies in the 
field borrowed their political ideas. Napoleon overran 
Spain in 1808, and the Spaniards resisted him with 
British aid. Yet when, after four years of unceasing 
war against the French, these same Spanish patriots 
set up a new constitution in 1812, they followed a 
French, not a British model, and reproduced the great 
Revolutionary Constitution of 1791. Napoleon subju- 
gated the greater part of Germany, and provoked against 
himself the great national rising of 1813 ; but the first 
demand of the German patriots was for the institutions 
of self-government, for which France had made them 
yearn, and they forced the King of Prussia himself to 
promise them a constitution. Even the Tsar of all the 
Russias was for a time indoctrinated with liberal ideas. 
His inspiration came from France, not from Britain, 
for it was not the practical convenience, but the moral 
Tightness, of self-government that appealed to him. 
Everywhere in Europe the new gospel of Liberty became 
an inspiring ideal, which took possession of the minds 
of the rising generation ; and although the actual period 
of the revolutionary wars did not see the establishment 
of a single permanent parliamentary system in any 
European country, the ferment which it created lasted 
on through the nineteenth century, and formed (along 
with the nationalist idea) one of the governing factors 
in the history of that age. 



REVOLUTION AND DOGMAS OF LIBERTY 53 

Thus, although the example and influence of Britain 
and America formed a great incentive, and the model 
of British institutions was, in the long run, generally 
imitated, it was the moral fervour that came from France 
which afforded the main impetus to the universal liberal 
movement which is the most striking feature of the 
nineteenth century. 



V 

THE POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE 
NINETEENTH CENTURY 

Throughout the nineteenth century the ferment of the 
democratic idea was working in all the European countries, 
with very remarkable results. Every European state 
was, during this century, compelled to submit to a trans- 
formation of its political system, more or less complete ; 
everywhere save in Russia and Turkey the forms of 
parliamentary government, as they had been worked 
out in the British communities, were adopted, either as 
the means of establishing a real popular control over 
the machinery of government, or as a means of at once 
veiling and reinforcing the power of the existing ruling 
elements in the State. 

But it would be a profound blunder to trace this vast 
movement wholly to the inspiration of the doctrines of 
liberty preached by the French Revolution, or to the prac- 
tical example afforded by the British system. Although 
it derived from these sources its form and much of its 
character, other factors also were powerfully at work. 

In the first place, the demand for the institutions of 
self-government was concurrent with the demand for 
national unity and freedom, which we have analysed 
elsewhere 1 ; and the interaction of these two move- 
ments was close and constant. Sometimes they were 

1 Nationalism and Internationalism, pp. 80-105. 



THE POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION 55 

mutually hostile. There were cases, as we shall see, in 
which the enthusiasts for the national idea were dis- 
trustful of the democratic idea, or, at any rate, ready 
to sacrifice political liberty in order to achieve unity ; 
and not infrequently devotees of the democratic idea 
were, and still are, distrustful of nationalism, because 
they were tempted to identify it with Chauvinism, and 
preferred to dream of and work for a combined revolt 
of all the oppressed in all lands, in a common spirit of 
brotherhood. But for the most part the two causes 
were identified in the minds of their advocates ; the 
most fervent democrats were also nationalists, and the 
most fervent nationalists, like Mazzini, aimed at estab- 
lishing democratic government in the reunited nation- 
states which they laboured to create. And beyond a 
doubt the identification of the two causes was sound. 
The highest degree of national unity is only attained 
when the whole community is conscious of its partnership 
in the common interest, as it can only be when all its 
members take a part in determining it. On the other 
hand, as we have already seen, self-government only 
becomes practicable in a community whose members 
are linked by a real unity of sentiment such as the 
national spirit creates. There must be a ' general will ' 
for co-operation before co-operation becomes possible, 
and the ' general will ' melts away unless it is founded 
upon mutual sympathy and common traditions and 
modes of life. The immense vigour of the nationalist 
movement during the nineteenth century has therefore 
been one of the main causes of the rapid extension of 
self-governing institutions ; and it is no mere coincidence 
that the period of nationalist victories, 1859-78, was 
also the period of the greatest successes of Liberalism. 



56 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

But an even more potent factor in the creation of 
the great political revolution was the economic and social 
transformation which passed over Europe during this 
age. The Industrial Revolution, which had begun in 
Britain in the late eighteenth century, was rapidly 
extended to Europe during the generations following 
the fall of Napoleon. Its political results were that the 
main elements of wealth and power no longer remained 
in the hands of the landholding class which had hitherto 
been dominant in every European state. New classes — 
new, at all events, on this scale — came into being : the 
class of capitalist entrepreneurs, who were the organisers 
of the new industries ; the class of scientifically trained 
experts, who devised their increasingly elaborate pro- 
cesses ; and the class of wage-earning operatives. The 
emergence of these classes would in any case have 
necessitated a reconstruction of the system of govern- 
ment in all the lands wherein they became the dominant 
factors ; and when they began to organise themselves 
for common interests, as the first and the third increas- 
ingly did, they became formidable forces which no 
government could disregard. To these classes the 
theories of political liberty made an irresistible appeal ; 
and the model of Britain, which was at once the leader 
of the world in the new industries, the field of the most 
fruitful experiments in co-operative action among the 
labouring classes, and the creator of the institutions of 
national self-government, acquired a steadily increasing 
influence over the minds of the reformers in other 
European countries, at any rate during all the earlier 
part of the period. Again, the needs of the new in- 
dustries demanded that not only their organisers, but 
also their rank and file, should be in some degree educated, 



THE POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION 57 

and the wide diffusion of popular education in all the 
industrial countries led to a great increase in the public 
knowledge of, and interest in, political questions, and 
made the work of revolutionary propaganda immensely 
easier. All these causes gave from the first a new force 
and meaning to the doctrines of political liberty. But 
they did more than that. They also produced consider- 
able modifications in the definition of what political 
liberty should mean, and what its results should be. 
Gradually the ideal of the more enthusiastic reformers 
came to be not merely the control of the ordinary tradi- 
tional machinery of government by the public will, but 
the use of this machinery for new and larger purposes : 
for nothing less than the reconstruction of the social 
order. The democratic movement, as the century 
progressed, became more and more also a social move- 
ment, though its social aims were far more vague and 
controverted than its political aims. 

The whole of this vast and complex movement has 
been from the beginning a European movement ; it 
cannot profitably be dealt with separately as it affects 
each country, although the conditions and the traditions 
of various countries profoundly influenced the forms 
which it assumed. In most countries it has repeatedly 
led to violent revolutionary upheavals or civil wars, 
which have in the majority of cases led to no very 
lasting results. The only states which have been free 
from such upheavals have been Britain, Norway, Sweden, 
and Holland ; and since in these countries the move- 
ment has achieved a success quite as great as that 
attained anywhere else, it will be instructive to observe, 
as our inquiry proceeds, what have been the causes of 
this difference. But these disturbances, and even the 



58 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

more active agitations which preceded them, were not 
continuous. They were, in a remarkable way, concen- 
trated into a few short periods of feverish and rapid 
change, separated by longer periods of comparative 
calm. The years 1820-23, 1830-33, 1847-50, 1859-78, 
and 1905-14 include practically all the great organic 
changes, temporary or permanent, in all the great 
European states. What is more remarkable, no state 
was free from political disturbance, not even Britain, 
during any of these periods. Nothing could more 
strikingly show that the movement towards popular 
government, though it has taken different forms and 
achieved varying degrees of success in various countries, 
has been a general European movement. Yet it has 
scarcely at all been studied as a single whole. It is 
as a single whole that we propose to regard it in this 
essay. 

It will simplify and clarify our treatment of this huge 
theme if we begin by recognising that it falls into certain 
clearly marked eras, each distinguished by features of 
its own. Although, as is always the case, such a de- 
marcation must be more or less arbitrary, and our 
periods must somewhat overlap, we shall gain more 
than we lose by the definition. 

The first of our eras covers the period from 1815 to 
about 1855. It is filled with more or less abortive 
revolutionary movements, inspired at once by liberal 
and by national ideals. On the liberal side its outstand- 
ing feature is the predominance of the primarily political 
aims of the French Revolution ; projects of social re- 
construction, though they were emerging, and were 
towards the end of the period beginning to be rather 
clamorously advocated, had not yet become the imme- 
diate declared aim of the leaders of these movements, 



THE POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION 59 

and the main conduct of them was in the hands of the 
' intellectuals ' and the middle class. 

The second era extends from about 1855 to about 
1878. The outstanding feature of these years was the 
remarkable series of nationalist victories which they 
witnessed, especially in Germany and Italy. The 
nationalist victories were largely due to the fact that 
they were organised by established governments which 
could dispose of large armed forces, and no longer by 
mere sporadic bands of enthusiasts. In the countries 
chiefly affected by these movements, governments were 
able to win the support of all classes by bringing to them 
the gift of national unity. In all cases they were able 
to win the backing of the middle class during this period, 
because these were years when the new industrial order 
was fixing its grip upon Europe, and the classes which 
most profited from it were most anxious for firm and 
efficient rule. Alliance between government and the 
middle class was, therefore, in all the industrial countries, 
a feature of this period ; and this alliance was secured 
by the establishment of parliamentary systems which in 
all these countries the middle class mainly controlled, 
though in some cases the labouring class also was en- 
franchised. Hence the period of nationalist victories 
was also the period of the establishment of constitutional 
government in all the more developed states of Europe. 
But a sharp distinction emerged between those states 
in which the parliamentary system was so devised as not 
to impair the traditional ascendancy of the older ruling 
elements, and those states in which it was given a real 
control over the whole machinery of government. Fore- 
most among the former group stood Germany ; fore- 
most among the latter Britain. Meanwhile among 
important elements of the labouring classes, who in effect 



60 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

nowhere enjoyed a real share of political power, and 
everywhere felt that the new industrial regime pressed 
unfairly upon them, a new turn was being given to the 
doctrine of democracy by the teaching of various apostles, 
among whom Karl Marx was the chief. It was not 
anywhere a formidable factor during the period before 
1878, though its strength was growing. But already 
there was apparent a striking contrast between the 
forms assumed by this social re-interpretation of the 
democratic doctrine in the countries where (as in Ger- 
many) the parliamentary system was little more than a 
form, and the countries where (as in Britain) it exercised 
a genuine supremacy. 

The third era, 1878-1900, is distinguished by the 
relative insignificance of the political changes which 
took place during its course. It was a period of un- 
exampled advance in industry ; a period also during 
which the non-European world was being very rapidly 
brought under the dominion of European civilisation, 1 
and these developments, together with the growing 
intensity of rivalry between the chief European states, 
seemed to engross attention. Nevertheless, though it 
saw few formal changes in the political systems of the 
European states, it was a period of high interest and im- 
portance, first because of the evidence which it afforded 
of the working of parliamentary institutions under 
various conditions, and the ends towards which they 
were being directed by the forces which controlled them ; 
and, secondly, because of the steady development which 
went on during these years in the doctrine of social 
democracy, which in some aspects seemed to challenge 
the validity of all that had been already achieved. 

The last of our eras occupied the full and troubled 

» These events are surveyed in The Expansion of Europe. 



THE POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION 61 

years from 1900 to 1914. They are too near us, their 
passions still too deeply stir us, for it to be possible that 
we should take a wholly calm and detached view of their 
events. Yet it must be obvious that the changes which 
took place during their course were as great and im- 
portant as those of any of the preceding ages. In the 
first place, the parliamentary system was adopted, in a 
more or less incomplete and unsatisfactory form, in the 
only remaining European states, Russia and Turkey, 
which had hitherto held aloof from the general move- 
ment ; while even Persia and China tried to adapt the 
system, and Egypt and India were full of discontent 
because it was not extended to them also. In the 
second place, in those countries in which not merely 
parliamentary institutions, but parliamentary sover- 
eignty, had been established, the mass of the people 
began to make its voice effectively heard, and to use 
its power for social reconstruction ; while in the coun- 
tries in which parliamentary institutions had been used 
merely as a mask, the difficulty of working them became 
much greater, and the destructive aspects of the doctrine 
of social-democracy became more threatening. And, in 
the third place, everywhere a deep dissatisfaction and 
discontent with the working of the parliamentary system 
made itself heard, and the machinery by which it was 
worked was subjected — perhaps especially in Britain, 
but also in France and Italy — to an acute and search- 
ing criticism. When the Great War began, the whole 
system was manifestly on its trial ; and the Great 
War itself has led to modifications and experiments of 
profound significance, some of which will be lasting. 

If we would face with intelligence the fascinating 
political problems which await us during the next 
generation, we must obtain some clear understanding of 



62 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

the significance of each of these eras in turn. Only so 
can we form a fair judgment upon the working of repre- 
sentative government, and upon the difficulties with 
which it has to contend. 

And there is one further generalisation which may 
usefully be made before we enter upon our survey : one 
distinction which we shall do well always to hold in 
mind. Although every European state has, during the 
nineteenth century, adopted representative institutions, 
there have been throughout the period two conflicting 
views as to the part which the representative body 
should play in the government of the State ; and in the 
end some nations have adopted the one view, some 
the other. In the one system, which we may call the 
British because it has held sway in Britain for more 
than two centuries, the representative body (however 
elected) possesses, if it likes to use it, a complete control 
over all the organs of government, and can determine 
the spirit and methods in which the powers of the execu- 
tive are to be exercised. In the other, which we may 
call the German, because it has been most successfully 
worked out in Germany, the executive power remains 
free from the effective control of the representative 
body, and, being master both of the army and of the 
professional administrative class, or bureaucracy, can in 
fact freely determine the direction of national policy. 
It inevitably does so along lines dictated by the two 
vital elements upon which it depends, the army and the 
bureaucracy. The sharp contrast between these two con- 
ceptions may be said to have come to its issue in the Great 
War, which will probably determine which of these two 
shall survive, though it will also leave to the survivor a 
complex of problems so difficult as to test all its capacity. 



VI 

THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS, 1815-1855 

When Europe settled down in 1815 after the revolu- 
tionary storm, absolute government of the eighteenth- 
century pattern was still the rule in the great majority 
of states. In six states only — Britain, France, the 
Netherlands, Sweden-and-Norway, Poland, and Switzer- 
land — parliamentary institutions of a more or less effec- 
tive type survived (in the case of Britain) from the pre- 
revolutionary age, or had (in the other cases) been newly 
established or reorganised. But in no one of these cases 
did the system satisfy the ideals of the reformers. 

In Britain the system which had worked reasonably 
well in the eighteenth century no longer answered to 
the needs of the community, because the social trans- 
formation which was soon to extend its influence over 
the rest of Europe, had been at work for two genera- 
tions ; and its result had already been to make the 
old governing class no longer really representative of 
the nation. The Agrarian Revolution had brought the 
land into the possession of a greatly reduced number of 
owners ; it had almost destroyed the once numerous 
class of small proprietors or ' yeomen ' ; it had substi- 
tuted for them a greatly increased class of farmers 
renting their holdings from the great landlords ; it had 
deprived the peasantry as a whole of any interest in 
the land they tilled, and reduced them to the rank of 

68 



64 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

mere wage-earners ; and between these classes there was 
no longer any such identity of interest as had once 
existed, but rather a sharp conflict. At the same time 
the Industrial Revolution had destroyed for ever the 
preponderant weight which had once belonged to the 
agricultural classes ; it had practically brought into being 
two classes which, as important elements in the nation, 
were new factors in English politics ; the class of capitalist 
manufacturers and entrepreneurs, and the class of wage- 
earning operatives, clustered in vast numbers in the 
new towns of the Midlands and the North. Upon these 
classes the prosperity of Britain must in the future 
mainly depend ; a sane and intelligent handling of their 
problems was becoming the greatest need of the com- 
munity. Yet they were in effect unrepresented in the 
parliament elected on the old anomalous methods. Even 
in the sphere of local government they had but a small 
voice. The manufacturers could indeed make them- 
selves heard in the ill-organised governing bodies of the 
new towns ; but not the operatives. The real control of 
local government remained in the hands of the land- 
owning class ; and that training in co-operation and in 
the management of public affairs in which most elements 
of the older England had had some share, was in effect 
denied to the makers of the new industrial England. 
Even the voluntary co-operation of associations for the 
safeguarding of their own interests was denied them, for 
the Anti-Combination Acts, inspired by the terror of 
secret societies to which the Revolution had given birth, 
forbade the establishment of trade unions or other such 
bodies. Manifestly, if the national unity of Britain was 
not to be undermined or destroyed, it had become neces- 
sary to undertake a reconstruction of the political system. 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 65 

But the traditional ruling class was not unnaturally blind 
to the necessity, was apt to see in the demands for change 
evidence of the existence of a dangerous revolutionary 
spirit, and was therefore tempted to sympathise with the 
reactionary elements which were at work in Europe 
during this age. Still, Britain possessed a parliament 
which, though out of touch with large elements of the 
nation, did effectively control the conduct of government ; 
and Britain allowed practically free play to public dis- 
cussion on political questions through the Press or 
otherwise. 

In France, the restored monarchy of 1814 granted a 
' Charter of Liberties ' in the hope of gaining the affec- 
tions of its subjects, and under this charter a parliament 
after the English model was established. But the re- 
presentative house was elected on so narrow a franchise 
that there were only about 200,000 voters in the country ; 
and its powers were regarded as existing by grant from 
the Crown, and were very restricted. In particular, it 
had no control over ministers. France continued to be 
governed in detail by the highly organised bureaucracy 
taken over from Napoleon, and no element of popular 
control was permitted in local affairs, while the right of 
association was still more jealously regarded than in 
Britain. Under this system, therefore, France cannot 
be described as in any real sense a self-governing country. 
Still, national affairs were publicly debated, and the 
Press was reasonably free : France, therefore, like Britain, 
was enviously regarded by other lands. 

In Sweden, an old-fashioned diet of four estates claimed 
legislative powers, but had no control over the executive. 
In Norway, when the people were in 1814 withdrawn 
without being consulted from the autocratic government 

J8 



66 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

of the king of Denmark and annexed to Sweden, they 
set up a very democratic legislature which the Swedish 
king was forced to recognise ; but they were not able 
to control the ministers whom the Crown appointed. In 
Poland the Tsar Alexander I., in the first flush of his 
vague liberal sentiments, set up in 1814 a semblance of 
a parliamentary system ; but from the first it had little 
power, and was soon swept aside altogether. In the 
Swiss cantons a great variety of systems prevailed, from 
the rudimentary democracy of the forest cantons to the 
oligarchy of Bern ; but the practice of Switzerland had 
practically no influence upon the rest of Europe. Every- 
where else despotism prevailed. 

At first the Great Powers, whose ' august union ' formed 
the dominating factor in the Europe of 1815, professed a 
mild willingness to permit the existence of self-governing 
institutions, provided that they were on the most modest 
scale. Britain had encouraged the establishment of a 
representative system in Sicily in 1812, but when the 
Bourbon king of Sicily regained Naples and the con- 
tinental part of his kingdom, he was allowed, without 
protest, to suppress self-government in Sicily. In Spain 
the leaders of the resistance against Napoleon had set up 
an extravagantly democratic system in 1812, but it was 
suppressed by the worthless King Ferdinand when he 
returned to his throne in 1814 ; nor did the ignorant 
and priest-ridden Spanish peasantry show any signs of 
regret for it. Alexander I. of Russia thought himself a 
Liberal, but his liberal sentiments very quicldy evapor- 
ated. Frederick William m. of Prussia had promised a 
constitution to his subjects in the excitement of 1813, 
but the promise was never fulfilled. The constitution of 
the Germanic Federation included a vague clause pro- 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 67 

mising the establishment of constitutions in the individual 
states of Germany, and under this clause a few of the 
South German princes set up shadowy parliamentary 
systems between 1816 and 1819. But the Diet of the 
Confederation was made to declare that no constitution 
was valid unless it was spontaneously granted by the good- 
will of the reigning prince ; and later it went further, 
and declared its hostility to all representative institu- 
tions. Before long this came to be also the attitude of 
the majority among the Great Powers. At the Congress 
of Verona in 1822 they united in declaring their hostility 
to all representative institutions as the source of revolu- 
tionary dangers. Even France joined in this programme 
of repression. Britain alone protested against it, and 
broke away from what Canning called ' the conspiracy of 
monarchs who aspire to bind Europe in chains.' Britain, 
indeed, despite the timid conservatism of her rulers, 
seemed to be the only Power with any liberal sympathies 
during the decade 1820-30 ; and she was the only state 
which made any advance towards greater political liberty. 
She did not, indeed, as yet attempt any large political 
reconstruction. But she allowed open discussion on the 
platform and in the Press ; and in 1825 she took the 
noteworthy step of repealing the anti-Combination Acts, 
and thus permitting the rise of trade unions, by whose 
means, henceforth, the labouring classes were to be 
enabled not only to ameliorate their social condition, but 
to give themselves a valuable training in self-government. 
These, however, were only beginnings, and elsewhere 
than in Britain reaction and repression reigned supreme. 
In face of these obstacles the demand for self-govern- 
ment, everywhere save in Britain, became a secret and 
underground movement. Just for that reason it was apt 



68 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

to assume extravagant forms, and to arouse by its 
mystery a vague terror among the ruling classes every- 
where. It became also cosmopolitan in character, and 
visionary exiles from all lands gathered especially in 
London and Paris, where alone they had some security, 
and which therefore became the centres of their pro- 
paganda. But the cosmopolitan conspiracy of free- 
dom assumed no very formidable dimensions until about 
1830. In most countries it drew its recruits mainly from 
among the professional classes. University professors 
and students (especially in Germany), military officers, 
lawyers, schoolmasters, and after a time the more edu- 
cated artisans of the big towns, supplied its chief sup- 
porters. They were chiefly concerned in the unrest in 
Germany from 1816 onwards, which gave to Austria and 
Prussia the excuse for a rigid censorship of the Press and a 
close supervision of university teaching, and which per- 
suaded the Diet of the German Confederation to prohibit 
the establishment of representative institutions. They 
brought about the revolutions of 1820-21 in Spain, 
Naples, and Piedmont ; but these were so ill-conducted 
and aimed at such indefinite ends, that they would have 
collapsed of their own weakness even if the Powers had 
not intervened to suppress them. The main result of 
these first abortive attempts was that the Concert of 
Powers, with the sole exception of Britain, were brought 
to adopt an attitude of definite hostility to the whole 
liberal movement, wherever and in whatever form it 
might show itself. 

During the decade 1820-30, indeed, there seemed to be 
a real danger that the organised power of all the great 
European states (except Britain) would be used to 
destroy the institutions of self-government even where 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 69 

they already existed. It was this which led the British 
statesman Canning to urge America to join him in a 
declaration that hi the New World, at any rate, the 
policy of repression should not be allowed to operate. 
The Monroe Doctrine (1823) was the result ; and Canning's 
formal recognition of the independence and self-govern- 
ment of the South American Republics (1825), in face of 
the declared desire of the continental states to restore them 
to their legitimate master the king of Spain, ' called a 
new world into existence,' in Canning's famous boast, 
1 to redress the balance of the old.' 

But the European movement towards self-government 
was too powerful to be repressed even by the ' August 
Union ' of the Great Powers. In 1830 a fresh and more 
earnest series of revolutionary movements broke out, 
beginning, as always, in France. They failed completely 
in Italy, in Germany, and in Poland, where they led only 
to an era of still more bitter and still more stupid reaction. 
But they obtained real and solid successes in Britain, in 
France, and in Belgium. These were, in truth, the first 
great victories for the cause of self-government during 
the nineteenth century ; and in these three Western 
countries effective popular control over government was 
henceforth solidly established. There is much that is 
instructive in all these three revolutions, whose main 
result was the initiation of the experiment of middle- 
class rule, and it is worth while to analyse their out- 
standing features. 

In Britain alone did the change take place without 
overt violence, though even in Britain there was a good 
deal of rioting, and at more than one point during the 
two years' struggle for the first Reform Act it seemed 
almost impossible to avoid open fighting. In Belgium 



70 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

the establishment of a parliamentary system was the 
result of open rebellion against the subordination to 
Holland established in 1815 ; in France it was achieved 
by fighting at the barricades in Paris. 

The Belgian system was much the most liberal yet 
established anywhere in Europe, since it embodied not 
only a wide franchise, but the responsibility of ministers 
to Parliament. It had arisen among a racially disunited 
people, who had never, in all their history, enjoyed self- 
government on a wider scale than that of the city, and 
who were united only in their dislike of Dutch rule. 
Yet it worked with perfect smoothness from the first ; 
brought peace and growing prosperity ; and demon- 
strated that parliamentary government is a practic- 
able system even where the circumstances do not seem 
especially to favour it. Though her history as an in- 
dependent state began with a revolution, Belgium has 
never again suffered from revolutionary upheavals ; she 
passed through the distressful period 1848-71 without 
disturbance. 

In Britain the main result of the revolution of 1830 
was the enfranchisement of the middle class by the 
Reform Act of 1832. This class had already demon- 
strated that it possessed the capacity for the management 
of common affairs by discussion, by the success with 
which it had organised the new industrial system, by the 
development (in face of great obstacles and without 
government assistance) of at any rate a rudimentary 
system of administration in the mushroom towns which 
had sprung up in the Midlands and the North, by the 
creation of churches and schools, and by the origination 
of an interesting, if modest, intellectual life, which had 
sprung into being during the previous half-century in 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 71 

the new centres of population. 1 They showed that they 
possessed the conservatism characteristic of their class 
and of their nation by leaving the actual conduct of 
government in the hands of the old ruling class. There 
was no dethronement of the landowning aristocracy. 
The Cabinets of the mid-nineteenth century were as pre- 
dominantly aristocratic in character as those of the 
eighteenth. But increasingly the governing ideas of 
national policy were coloured by the ideas of political 
and economic liberalism, of which the middle class was 
at this period the stronghold, in Britain as in other 
countries ; and the doctrines of the middle-class prophets, 
Bentham and the Mills, Malthus and Ricardo, more and 
more determined the action of governments. 

This showed itself especially in three ways. A new 
fiscal policy, the policy of free trade, was adopted and 
won its definite triumph in 1846. The system of local 
government, which, like the system of national govern- 
ment had been thrown out of gear by the agrarian and 
industrial revolutions, was reconstructed by the Poor 
Law Amendment Act of 1834 and the Municipal Reform 
Act of 1835 ; and although these Acts were only the 
beginning of a series of changes carried out in a piecemeal 
and disconnected way, it is nevertheless true that from 
1835 onwards Britain was covered by a network of elected 
local governing bodies, municipal corporations and boards 
of guardians, which kept alive and developed that habit 
of local self-government which has always been one of 
the outstanding features of British life. There was, for 

1 The Provincial Renascence in England during the period 1780- 
1830 is a subject to which not enough attention has been directed. It 
was destroyed largely by the railways, which brought London too 
near, and by the opening of the Universities to Dissenters. But while 
it lasted it was full of promise. 



72 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

a long time to come, no real parallel to this system in 
other countries, where the effective organs of local 
administration continued to be controlled by centralised 
bureaucracies. Lastly, the sincerity with which the 
ideas of modern liberalism had been adopted by the new 
ruling classes in Britain was demonstrated, during the 
period following 1832, by the rapidity with which self- 
government, on an ampler scale than had ever been 
allowed to the American Settlements, was granted to the 
infant colonies of the second British Empire. 1 Even in 
the difficult conditions of India, the ideal of self-govern- 
ment was during these years proclaimed as the ultimate 
aim of policy. But the most remarkable illustration of 
this tendency was afforded by the treatment of Canada 
after the rebellion of 1837. Within four years full re- 
sponsible government had been established amongst a 
people recently simmering with discontent, and self- 
government was successfully acclaimed as a panacea for 
the most dangerous of political evils. Thus, although the 
Act of 1832 was far from establishing in Britain a com- 
plete system of democracy, it did securely enthrone once 
more, after the reaction and disturbance of the revolu- 
tionary age, the real conduct of public affairs by discussion 
and agreement. It admitted to partnership in the re- 
sponsibility for the national welfare those classes of the 
community which had trained themselves for the work. 

The immense and growing prosperity of Britain in this 
period, unparalleled in any other country, was, of course, 
not wholly or mainly due to political causes. But it was 
partly due to them. The freedom of Britain from the 
bitterness which marked the public life of most European 

1 See The Expansion of Europe, chap, vi., for a fuller analysis of this 
development. 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS IS 

countries during these years was certainly due to the 
character of its political system. Britain alone enjoyed 
freedom of the Press, of association, and of meeting. 
For that reason the discontents which were felt among 
her people expressed themselves not in underground 
conspiracy, which always tends to assume extravagant 
forms just because it has not to meet free criticism, but 
in open, healthful, and productive public discussion. 
For that reason also Britain became the refuge of eager 
reformers from other countries ; so much so that most 
governments regarded the hospitality which she afforded 
to political exiles as a grave danger to public order. And 
for the same reasons, Britain became, more than ever, the 
envied model of reformers of other lands. 

The revolution of 1830 in France was less happy in its 
results, just because it was not supported by an estab- 
lished tradition and habit of self-government. On the 
surface, indeed, the changes effected in the two countries 
seemed singularly alike. In France, as in Britain, the 
middle class now obtained political power. Moreover, as 
the new monarchy of the Orleanist branch held the 
throne (like William m. in 1688) by gift of the represen- 
tatives of the nation, there could be no more talk of the 
parliamentary system existing by grace and by the grant 
of the Crown ; no further claim, such as Charles x. had 
put forward, that the king could override the charter if in 
his discretion he thought fit to do so. To that extent 
1830 may be said definitely to have established the 
sovereignty of the people in France, as 1688 established 
it in England. Again, there was a real freedom of parlia- 
mentary discussion and debate in the France of Louis 
Philippe, and a considerable, though not an unqualified, 
freedom was allowed to the Press. For these reasons the 



74 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

French system appeared on a casual view to be as 
genuinely a self-governing system as the British, and its 
working was followed with an equal envy by the Liberals 
of Germany and other countries. But it was not so in 
reality. Not only did the restrictions on the Press, and 
still more on associations and public meetings, drive the 
expression of public discontent to seek a vent in under- 
ground conspiracy ; more important, the control of 
Parliament over the executive was very far from being 
effective. Louis Philippe (1830-48) never admitted that 
he must choose his ministers from among the leaders of 
the parliamentary majority, and as Parliament was split 
into many parties, no one of which had a clear majority, 
he was able in a large degree to evade this necessity. 
Above all, the real governing power in France still con- 
tinued to be the Napoleonic bureaucracy, and by its 
control over the bureaucrats the government was able to 
influence elections in a way never known in England since 
the time of George in. and Lord North. Some faint 
attempts were made to establish the beginnings of local 
self-government in France during this regime, but they 
were singularly ineffective, and when the system sud- 
denly fell, in 1848, bureaucratic influence was almost as 
fully as ever the vital fact in local affairs. For all these 
reasons, the system of 1830 not merely failed to satisfy 
the demand for self-governing institutions, but when it 
came to be overthrown, it fell, not by constitutional 
means, not as the result of a decision arrived at after 
open national discussion, but by a violent revolutionary 
upheaval, which had been steadily brewing during all 
the eighteen years for which the system lasted. 

It is perhaps worthy of note that the systems of these 
years in Britain and France constitute almost the only 



The era of liberal revolutions *6 

attempts that have ever been made, or probably ever 
will be made, to place a nation-state under the govern- 
ment of the middle class. There have, of course, been 
abundant instances in which the actual conduct of 
government has been mainly in the hands of men belong- 
ing to the middle class, while supreme power belonged to 
classes above or below them ; for the middle class is in 
all countries the great reservoir of competent, industrious 
and honest administrators, and from among its members 
are nearly always drawn the preachers of ideals, whether 
of aristocracy or of democracy, of divine right or of 
anarchy. All the governments of to-day are, in fact, 
mainly worked by middle-class agents, and most of the 
apostles of revolt are middle class also. But the national 
systems of the 'thirties are the only important cases in 
which the middle class as such has obtained sovereign 
control of the organs of the State. Political philosophers 
from Aristotle downwards have sung the praises of this 
class as the ideal repository of power ; and the historian 
Lecky has ventured to assert that human government 
has never reached a higher pitch of honesty and ability 
than it did in France and Britain under this system. In 
his view humanity, which has been during all the ages 
labouring after the perfect government, achieved it then for 
one brief period ; but unhappily it let slip its felicity, and 
has been sinking deeper into the abyss ever since ! And we 
may very readily admit that the level of political ability 
displayed by the parliamentary leaders in France and 
Britain was uniformly high during this period, and that 
both countries enjoyed a real prosperity. But the plain 
fact is that the system lasted only a very short time in 
both countries. Eighteen years of it (1830-48) were 
enough to weary France to boredom, and even stolid 



.' 



76 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

Britain stood it for only thirty-five years (1832-67) : then 
the middle class itself abandoned power. Why was this ? 
If moderation, good sense and respectability are the 
highest qualities a system of government can possess, we 
may be ready to agree with Lecky that the systems 
which brought to the forefront such shining examples of 
these virtues as Sir Robert Peel and M. Guizot attained 
very nearly to the ideal. But humanity will never be 
satisfied with these rather stockish and tepid virtues. 
The greatest defect of the middle class as a class is just 
its mediocrity. And the swiftly changing world of the 
nineteenth century demanded above all things courage, 
imagination, and insight in its rulers — the very qualities 
in which every middle class is most apt to be deficient. 
When all is said, the middle class did not and could not 
fully represent the life and aspirations of the shifting, 
striving, variegated society of a modern industrial state. 
It had no such claim to leadership as the landowning 
class had possessed in the comparatively stable and 
ordered society of eighteenth-century Britain ; on the 
contrary, it was, by all its habits of mind, almost de- 
barred from any sympathetic understanding of those 
vast and hitherto dumb elements in the modern state 
which were now beginning to struggle towards a clearer 
sense of their needs and claims, and were dimly forming 
the aspiration after a fuller citizenship. These needs 
and claims and aspirations of the dumb mass had to be 
somehow interpreted and satisfied, if the ideal of liberty 
was to be realised in any generous sense. To the average 
mind of the middle class they provided food only for 
distrust and trepidation, not for sympathy. That is 
why, in the continental states especially, hatred of the 
bourgeoisie became, among the labouring classes, a far 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 77 

more active sentiment than hatred of the aristocracy 
had ever been. That is why, also, the government of 
the middle class could not last. It lasted in Britain 
long enough to achieve a good deal of good work, and 
long enough to give time for the classes beneath it to 
train themselves in the practice of self-government and 
in political responsibility. It was overthrown in France 
suddenly and easily, with a swift gesture of weariness, 
before the masses of the nation were ready to take on 
the task of government ; and France suffered, as we 
shall see, a heavy penalty for its premature failure. But 
in both countries it could be no more than a transition 
stage, preparatory to the assumption by the whole com- 
munity of the responsibility for its own destinies. While 
the transition lasted, it seemed, to the middle class itself, 
that stability and finality had been attained ; but all 
the time the fermentation of the democratic idea was at 
work below. 

The years from 1830 to 1848, which are pre-eminently 
the period of this underground fermentation, form one 
of the most fascinating periods of modern history ; and 
it is strange that their essential features have been so 
little explored or discussed. For during these years, in 
a degree unknown in any other period, there was going 
on an all but universal European or cosmopolitan move- 
ment, mainly conducted in secret. Its object was the 
realisation of the twin ideals of Nationalism and Demo- 
cracy, with which, here and there in the bigger centres 
of population, the new and half-formulated ideal of 
Socialism was beginning to be associated. On the Nation- 
alist aspect of this movement we have already said some- 
thing. 1 On the Socialist dreams which were beginning 
1 Nationalism and Internationalism, pp. 80 S. 



78 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

to be blent with it we shall presently find it necessary 
to make some comment. But for our present purpose, 
and for its immediate effects upon the course of events, 
its democratic or Liberal aspect is the most important. 

Inspired and encouraged by the success of the revolu- 
tions of 1830, partial and incomplete as it had been, 
the apostles of democracy devoted themselves during 
the following years to an ardent and unceasing propa- 
ganda, the main centres of which were to be found among 
the revolutionary exiles gathered in Paris and London, 
in Brussels and Bern ; for these were the only important 
centres where free discussion was possible. This feverish 
propaganda spread over the whole of Europe, and was 
conducted by means of secret clubs, and the dissemina- 
tion of pamphlets and other literature. Everywhere it 
was eagerly welcomed, especially by students, and by 
the more educated artisans of the great cities. Govern- 
ments were only half aware of its magnitude and strength, 
and for that reason were completely taken by surprise 
by the sudden unanimous upheaval of 1848 which was its 
consequence. The elaborate police-systems of Austria 
and Prussia were quite unable to combat it or even to 
reveal it. It penetrated even into the vast inchoate 
mass of the Russian people, and gave rise (in reaction 
against ferocious repression) to the movement of Nihilism, 
which took its birth during these years. 

There was only one European country in which this 
democratic agitation was allowed to proceed quite openly. 
This was Britain, where it took the form of the Chartist 
movement — an organised demand for manhood suffrage, 
vote by ballot and annual elections, behind which lay 
vague and conflicting schemes of social reorganisation. 
The Chartists had their newspapers, in which even the 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 79 

most violent among them could formulate their pro- 
gramme without restraint ; they had their public meetings 
and demonstrations, subject to no restriction except that 
of not interfering with public order ; and the nation as a 
whole took part in the canvassing of these proposals, which 
had to stand such a fire of criticism as the underground 
propaganda of other countries never met. In the result, 
though there was some local rioting, there was never 
any danger of revolution. The extent and character of 
the movement was perfectly known. It was never a 
huge, vague mystery, as in other countries. Its culmina- 
tion took the peaceful form of a monster procession to 
present a petition to Parliament. Nobody interfered 
with the procession ; only a large number of private 
citizens were asked to enrol themselves as special con- 
stables to help the police in preventing the outbreak of 
disorders. The day passed off without disturbance. The 
petition was presented, and disregarded ; most of its 
demands were actually granted in course of time, but as 
the result of deliberation, and not of violence. 

But far more valuable and important than the Chartist 
agitation were various other spontaneous movements 
which were going on during the period in Britain, among 
the artisan classes of the towns ; for their success demon- 
strated that these classes also possessed in a very high 
degree the power of conducting common affairs by dis- 
cussion and agreement. Since 1825 workpeople had been 
allowed freely to organise trade unions, a right which 
was regarded with the gravest apprehension in other 
countries. As was to be expected, these organisations 
made at first many mistakes in their endeavours to wrest 
from the employing classes better conditions of life and 
labour for their members. But the good which they 



80 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

achieved vastly outweighed the evil, and they produced 
in the best sections of the artisan community a habit of 
co-operation and of regard for common interests, even 
though they were primarily the interests of a class, which 
prepared the way for the coming participation of these 
classes in the direction of national affairs. Not less 
valuable were the activities of the co-operative societies 
and friendly societies, which were establishing themselves 
during these years. Thus, during the period of middle- 
class rule, the British people, true to their ancient in- 
stincts, were preparing themselves for democracy by a 
spontaneous increase and development of the arts of self- 
government ; and it was because they were doing this, 
and were left free to do it, as well as because the public 
discussion of political questions was unrestrained, that 
Britain was undisturbed by the great upheaval of 1848, 
though the forces which produced it were as actively at 
work within her bounds as in any other country. 

For the year 1848 brought the sudden culmination of 
all this long underground preparation. In February of 
that year the Orleanist monarchy, and the middle-class 
system which it represented, suddenly collapsed before 
the barricades of Paris, and a democratic republic based 
on universal suffrage was set up in its place. With 
amazing speed the infection spread from France into the 
neighbouring countries, whose soil had been so laboriously 
prepared. It seized possession of all the states of 
Germany and Italy, and produced a simultaneous up- 
heaval among the discordant nationalities of Austria. 
Everywhere, in the face of an apparently unanimous 
public demand, the ruling governments found it im- 
possible to offer any resistance. Everywhere parlia- 
mentary institutions, based upon universal suffrage, were. 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 81 

set up. The whole of Metternich's reactionary system 
tumbled to pieces like a house of cards. In Germany not 
only were all the states, including Prussia, driven to con- 
sent to the establishment of democratic government, but 
a single parliament, elected by universal suffrage, met at 
Frankfort to draw up a constitution for a new united 
German state. Until the autumn of 1848 it appeared as 
if the democratic revolution was going to be completely 
triumphant, and as if Britain, hitherto the leader of the 
movement towards self-government, was going to be left 
completely in the background. The sweeping French 
theories of political liberty had got the upper hand, and 
they had certainly shown a power to arouse the enthusi- 
asm of peoples such as the slow and practical experiments 
of Britain had never exhibited. 

But in the autumn of 1848 the reaction began. By 
the middle of 1849 the complete democratic triumph 
which had seemed within sight had everywhere become 
hopeless. By 1850 the old regime seemed to be, every- 
where except in France, fully restored ; and in France 
itself the democratic republic of 1848 had by 1852 passed 
into the despotic Second Empire, more repressive in its 
policy than the middle-class monarchy of Louis Philippe, 
or even the restoration-monarchy of Louis xvin., had 
ever been. The Austrian Empire returned to a hide- 
bound system of reaction yet more severe than that which 
had existed from 1815 to 1848. Italy sank back again 
into disunion, and in every Italian state save one the 
old dark tyranny revived. In Germany the deadening 
forms of the Confederation of 1815, which had been swept 
aside in 1848, were re-established, and the petty princes 
were left free to re-establish unqualified personal rule, 
and in most cases did so. From all these lands, so 

F 



82 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

recently full of great hopes, a throng of exiles poured 
forth to take refuge in Britain or in America, and the 
victory of the system of self-government seemed in 1850 
to be more distant than ever. 

The disastrous failure of the great upheaval of 1848 
seemed to contemporary Liberals to be an irremediable 
tragedy. And indeed, if it could have achieved even a 
partial victory, the subsequent history of Europe would 
have been widely different, and probably much happier. 
Especially unfortunate was the total failure of the re- 
volution in Germany ; for if Germany could have been 
unified under a democratic form of government, by the 
spontaneous action of her whole people working in har- 
mony with the peoples of other lands, she would have 
been saved from the poison which came from the military 
dominion of Prussia, and which has made her a danger 
and a terror not merely to her neighbours but to the 
whole of civilisation. As it was, the failure of 1848 left 
her ready to be the victim of Bismarck, and of the spirit 
which he embodied. The nationalist idea was not 
destroyed or weakened in Germany by the failure of 1848 ; 
but having been disappointed of the dream of securing 
national unity through democratic machinery, it was 
ready to use the weapons of blood and iron, force and 
fraud. 

Yet the failure of 1848 is highly instructive. It was 
due to two main causes. The first was that its leaders, 
and still more the bulk of their followers, were everywhere 
impracticable theorists, without any real experience in 
political affairs. The second was that because the 
democratic movement was cosmopolitan in character, 
and wholly disregarded distinctions of national tradition 
and temper, it came inevitably into conflict with the 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 83 

prickly spirit of national pride, which was a factor in the 
'48 even more potent than the Liberal movement itself. 
The Liberal cause was ruined in Austria by the antipathy 
between Magyars and Slavs. It was ruined in Germany 
by the difficulty of reconciling the demand for the unity 
of all the German lands (including German Austria) with 
the demand for an effective central representative con- 
trol. It was ruined in Italy partly by provincial par- 
ticularism, and partly by the failure of the Austrian 
peoples to recognise that the Italian cause was identical 
with their own ; they combined with their zeal for 
liberty a resolution not to let their subject peoples escape 
from their rule, and therefore provided the armies which 
first crushed the Italian resistance, and could then be 
turned back upon their own insecurely established 
liberties. The failure of 1848 was, in short, inevitable, 
because the attempt was made to establish a democratic 
system suddenly, without the provision of any preliminary 
training in self-government for the peoples who were to 
carry it into effect, and before the victory of the national 
cause had provided that foundation of unity without 
which self-government cannot work. 

The 1848 revolution was, however, not quite resultless. 
It produced lasting effects upon the government of five 
states — Holland, Denmark, Sardinia, France, and Prussia 
— and the memory of it exercised a very important influ- 
ence upon the minds of ruling princes, which, after an 
interval, contributed to bring about the widespread de- 
velopment of parliamentary institutions in the period 
from 1859 onwards. 

Although Holland was not the scene of any revolu- 
tionary outbreak in 1848, the king was persuaded by 
the spectacle of the disturbance in other lands to concede 



S4 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

a revision of the constitution of 1815, under which he 
had wielded an uncontrolled authority over the executive. 
The Dutch constitution of 1848 established a genuine 
parliamentary system, with responsible ministers and 
a moderate middle-class franchise. Under this system 
Holland took its place, along with Britain and Belgium, 
as one of the few states wherein national policy was 
controlled by the popular will, and, apart from a long 
agitation for the extension of the suffrage, which ulti- 
mately triumphed in 1887, she has been in a remarkable 
degree free from civil dissensions, and has enjoyed un- 
broken peace and prosperity. In Denmark the king, 
hitherto absolute, was persuaded by the revolutionary 
movement to grant a democratic constitution in 1849 ; 
but he soon changed his mind, and in 1854 and 1855 the 
powers of the representative body were reduced to a 
mere shadow. Still, Denmark has possessed some sort 
of parliamentary institutions ever since 1849. 

Sardinia was the only one of the Italian States which 
remained faithful to the promise of self-government 
which all the States had been forced to give in 1848. 
Although her king, Victor Emanuel, might have got 
better terms from victorious Austria if he had been 
willing to break his word and fall in with the reaction, 
he held out staunchly. And this good faith brought a 
rich reward. It made Sardinia appear the only hope of 
freedom for Italy in the eyes of Italian patriots. And the 
parliamentary system working in Turin from 1848 on- 
wards gave to the great statesman Cavour, who was to 
be the real creator of Italian unity, the chance of rising 
to the leadership of the national cause. It is worth 
noting that Cavour was an admirer of the British system, 
and from the first the new Parliament of Turin modelled 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 85 

its proceedings upon the British exemplar. Though the 
franchise in Sardinia was wide, it was not so wide as 
universal suffrage. Perhaps it was this fact alone which 
enabled it to resist the reactionary influences, which 
would have been greatly strengthened if the mass of 
the peasantry, under priestly control, had exercised the 
controlling power. 

In France universal (manhood) suffrage was the only 
permanent result of 1848 ; it has remained undisturbed 
from that day to this. Beyond question it was the insti- 
tution of universal suffrage which enabled Napoleon m. 
to sweep aside the republican system, and to establish 
his despotic empire. Lamartine and the other leaders 
of the revolution had been dominated not only by the 
theory of complete democracy, but by the old Montesquieu 
doctrine of the division of powers, whose consequences 
we have already analysed in the case of America. In- 
stead of making the executive responsible to the legis- 
lature, they had given it an independent position, under 
the direction of a President who was to be (on the 
American model) directly elected by popular vote, and 
whose mandate therefore would appear to be as valid as, 
and even more immediate than, that of Parliament itself. 
The magic of Napoleon's name sufficed to secure for him 
an overwhelming popular vote as President. His position 
as President gave him control over the army and over 
the bureaucracy, which was still the most effective force 
in the government of France. Aiming, from the moment 
of his election, at the re-establishment of his uncle's 
practically despotic system, he set himself especially to 
win the support of the Church, which still wielded a very 
powerful influence over the mass of the peasantry, and 
of the prosperous middle class, which was alarmed, and 



86 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

alienated from the liberal cause, by the undigested 
Socialist programmes put forward in Paris during the 
excitement of 1848, and by the bloody and reckless 
disorders to which they had led. When Parliament, 
largely influenced by middle-class feeling, showed a desire 
to restrict universal suffrage, Napoleon posed as the 
protector of the principle, and used this as a pretext for 
the monstrous coup d'etat of 1851, whereby the Parliament 
was dissolved and most of its leading members thrown 
into prison. Supported by the army, the bureaucracy, 
and the Church, he was able to secure from the votes of 
an uneducated peasantry an overwhelming majority for 
a plebiscite confirming these lawless acts, and establishing 
a practical autocracy ; and a year later a second plebis- 
cite authorised the establishment of a hereditary empire. 
The most rigid control over the Press, the most ruthless 
persecution of all opposition, did not in the least impair 
his hold on the mass of the electors, supported as it was 
by the moral influence of the Church, and by the organ- 
ised corruption of the bureaucracy. There was not in 
Europe a more complete autocracy than that which was 
wielded by Napoleon m. between 1851 and 1867. It 
rested upon universal suffrage, and could not have existed 
for a day if the voting power had been limited to those 
classes which possessed some political knowledge and 
some freedom of thought. Prance had taken too sudden 
a leap into complete democracy ; she paid for it by a 
ruinous despotism. 

But the most interesting of the permanent results of 
1848 was the introduction of the semblance of a par- 
liamentary system into the militarist and bureaucratic 
government of Prussia, and the formal fulfilment, after 
a, delay of nearly half a century, of the promise given in 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 87 

1813. There was, indeed, no State in Europe for which 
a system of self-government seemed less appropriate than 
Prussia, for the greatness of this State had been absolutely 
the creation of a strong military monarchy. Originally 
a ' mark ' or border province, a sort of permanent armed 
camp thrown out by the Germans into the realm of the 
Slavs, Prussia had never owed its growth to any kind of 
national feeling. Every addition to its territory had 
been carved out by the sword, or won by fraud ; and the 
landed gentry of the true Prussian territory east of the 
Elbe, the celebrated ' Junkers,' were traditionally a 
fighting caste, who owed their lands to the sword, and 
had never forgotten it, and who still, in the nineteenth 
century, exercised a quite feudal dominance over their 
tenantry. They had found in the princes of the Hohen- 
zollern dynasty leaders after their own heart, and had 
provided for many generations the officer-class of the 
very efficient Prussian army. Brave, brutal, competent 
and domineering, materialists and believers that Might is 
Right, they scorned all the sentimentalism of the Liberals 
and the Nationalists. They were the ruling class of a 
State which had won greatness by means of force and 
fraud, and by these means alone, and these seemed to 
them the only stable foundations for greatness in States. 
They believed in discipline, not liberty. Regarding war 
as the highest of political activities, they saw in the 
warrior-leaders of the State its natural rulers, and the 
notion of settling vexed questions by the ballot-papers 
of the mob filled them with mere contempt. 

The ' Junkers ' formed the first of the two pillars of the 
Prussian monarchy. The second was its highly efficient 
bureaucracy, the best-trained and most competent public 
service in Europe, which had been developed by Frederick 



88 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

William I. and his successors since the beginning of the 
eighteenth century. With a fine tradition of industry 
and method, the Prussian bureaucracy combined a 
masterful contempt for the intelligence of the populace 
whom it brigaded and dragooned. No one could be more 
unsympathetic, or more indifferent to the tastes and 
preferences of ordinary men, than the Prussian bureau- 
crats ; but their hard and bullying methods had produced 
excellent material results. It was their work which had 
enabled a poor and thinly peopled State to play the part 
of a great Power. They had done wonders in reorganising 
the new provinces acquired by Prussia in 1815. They 
were the organisers of the Prussian Zollverein, the most 
remarkable political creation of early nineteenth-century 
Germany. With their tradition of brilliant professional 
efficiency, and their knowledge of the great successes 
which it had won, they were naturally slow to believe 
that the enthronement of the ignorant mass could bring 
any good results. Thus the two main factors of Prussian 
greatness were united in their contempt for the democratic 
theory. They preferred to pin their faith to the divine 
right of the Hohenzollern monarchy, whose servants they 
had always been, and which had given them the oppor- 
tunity of winning their triumphs. 

Yet even in Prussia the demand for liberty and self- 
government had found an echo. Even the Prussian 
people were attracted by the dream of being able to call 
their souls their own, and of securing that the objects 
pursued by the State should be those dictated by the 
public conscience, by what Rousseau called the General 
Will, not those entertained by any ambitious dominant 
caste, however efficient. In 1813 the universality of 
this demand had led Frederick William in. to promise 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 89 

a constitution, but the promise had never been fulfilled. 
In 1848 the demand for political liberty was so over- 
whelming and so unanimous, even in Berlin, that Frederick 
William iv. gave way, and in spite of the disgust of his 
Junker and bureaucrat advisers, permitted the election, 
by universal suffrage, of a representative body which 
was to draw up a liberal constitution of the most approved 
modern type. This assembly actually met, and talked 
a good deal. As soon as the reaction was well under 
way, the king dissolved it. But being at the moment 
anxious to placate the German Liberals (who deeply dis- 
trusted Prussia) because he hoped for their support in 
securing the leadership of the national movement, he 
thought it wise to issue a constitution of his own devising. 
This was the constitution of 1850, and as, unlike most of 
the systems of these years, it was allowed to survive, it 
is still the ruling constitution of the Prussian State. On 
the surface it was most liberal in character. It set up a 
Parliament of two Houses, an Upper House partly heredi- 
tary and partly nominated by the Crown, and a Lower 
House elected by universal suffrage. 

But a closer analysis shows that this appearance of 
liberality was only a mask, and that the scheme had been 
devised with great skill to take away with one hand what 
it seemed to give with the other. The Upper House 
being mainly nominated, and drawn from the landed 
class who were all by tradition devoted monarchists, was 
far more completely dependent upon the Crown than the 
House of Lords ever was in Britain ; and as it possessed 
an equality of power with the Lower House, it could be 
trusted to ensure that any proposals distasteful to the 
government should be suppressed. The Lower House, 
though elected by universal suffrage, was by no means 



90 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

so democratic as this would suggest ; for by a very in- 
genious device the electors were divided into three classes 
according to the amount of direct taxation which they 
paid : the few richest men who between them paid one- 
third of the taxes formed the first class ; the more numerous 
but still few men next most heavily taxed formed the 
second class ; and the whole mass of poor folk who paid 
no direct taxes at all were lumped with the very large 
number of men of small fortune who between them paid 
the last third of the total. Each of these groups had 
equal voting powers, so that though every adult male 
had a vote, the vote of a rich man weighed as heavily as 
many hundreds or thousands of poor men's votes ; and 
it might be expected that the forces of conservatism 
could generally be secure of a majority. 

Still more significant were the restrictions imposed 
upon the powers of the new Parliament. As the consti- 
tution had been granted by a royal concession, it was 
held that the king had alienated from the mass of his 
hitherto unlimited powers only those which he had 
specifically defined in his instrument of concession. All 
residual authority must be regarded as remaining with 
the Crown ; and in any case of doubt as to whether the 
Landtag (parliament) possessed a right which it claimed, 
the award must be in favour of the Crown. Now the 
rights definitely conceded were only two. The Landtag's 
approval was required for new projects of legislation, and 
for new proposals of taxation or loans. So far as concerns 
legislation, the whole body of existing law (which assumed 
the existence of an autocratic authority) retained, of 
course, its validity, and could not be altered without the 
consent of the Upper House and the Crown, which was 
never obtainable when any real restriction upon govern- 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 91 

mental authority was proposed. New laws initiated in 
the Lower House had not the faintest chance of passing 
unless they were approved by the government ; and for 
this reason the Lower House soon gave up the attempt 
to initiate legislation, and perforce confined itself to de- 
bating government proposals, which it had no hope of 
being able seriously to alter. So far as concerned taxation, 
the Landtag was precluded from touching any already 
existing tax ; it could only approve or disapprove of new 
taxes. 

Such were the actual powers of the new Parliament. 
They were modest enough. But far more important 
were the powers withheld from its purview. In accord- 
ance with the mischievous doctrine of ' division of powers,' 
it was allowed no control over executive government. 
It could not appoint or dismiss a single minister, and 
the most overwhelming adverse vote could have no effect 
upon ministerial action, because, lacking the power of 
refusing supplies, the representative house had no means 
of enforcing its opinion. The heads of the great depart- 
ments were not to be, as in England, politicians sitting 
in Parliament ; they were independent permanent ser- 
vants of the Crown, and though they might attend either 
house to make statements or answer questions, they did 
so de haut en has, from a raised dais, and could not be 
compelled to say more than they thought fit. In other 
words, the Crown retained an entirely independent con- 
trol of the bureaucracy ; and as the bureaucracy was much 
older than Parliament, and as its power was more effec- 
tually rooted in every part of the country than that of 
Parliament could for long hope to be, this meant that 
the real conduct of government was wholly removed 
from parliamentary control. Lastly, the army, which 



92 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

had always been the main source of the power of the 
Hohenzollerns, was entirely withdrawn from the control 
or criticism of Parliament. No Hohenzollern would 
willingly allow, or has ever allowed, any other power to 
share in the supreme command over the army ; and as, 
by Prussian law, the army included in some sense the 
whole manhood of the nation under the age of forty, 
this was a limitation of the most vital import. As fully 
as the empire of Napoleon, the Hohenzollern throne had 
always rested, and now rests, ultimately upon military 
strength ; and so long as the royal control over the 
military forces of the State remains unqualified, Prussia 
must continue to be essentially a despotism, whatever 
the constitutional forms by which it is masked. 1 

Thus the constitution of 1850, liberal as it appeared 
on the surface, did not give to the people of Prussia the 
power of controlling the character and aims of their own 
government. It left the old bureaucratic and militarist 
system as powerful as ever, only strengthened by being 
made aware of the trend of public opinion. In some 
respects the system of government thus set up resembled 
that of the Tudors in England ; in the one case as in the 
other, Parliament was permitted to approve of legisla- 
tion and taxation, but not to meddle in the conduct of 
government. But the differences are vital. The Tudors 
had no army ; and, lacking military force, could not 
have maintained their authority for a month if they had 
violated public sentiment. Within twelve years of 1850, 
Bismarck was to show that there was no such restriction 
upon the Hohenzollern monarchy. The Tudors had no 

1 It is worth while to quote once more the Prussian historian and 
publicist Delbruck : « Wherein lies the real power ? It lies in arms. 
The question, therefore, by which to determine the essential character 
of a State is always the question, " Whom does the Army obey ? " ' — 
Regierung und Volkswille, p. 133. 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 93 

highly organised and efficient bureaucracy, spreading its 
net over the whole country ; they were dependent for 
the exercise of their will upon the self-governing local 
organisations. In all essentials, England under the 
Tudors was a much more genuinely self-governing land 
than Prussia after 1850. 

By 1855 the results of the period of liberal revolutions 
had been fully revealed. They were greater than could 
have been anticipated by any but the most sanguine 
prophets in 1815. The forms, at least, of representative 
government had been instituted in most of the European 
states. But there were only four states — Britain, 
Belgium, Holland, and Sardinia — in which the main 
lines of national policy were effectively determined by 
the representatives of the nation. In France universal 
suffrage, prematurely established, had led to the military 
autocracy of Napoleon m. In Prussia the old ruling 
factors retained their supremacy, unaffected by the forms 
of Parliament. Denmark had followed the Prussian 
example, and neither the old-fashioned estates of Sweden, 
nor the democratic assembly of Norway, had any control 
over the executive government. Spain had been nomin- 
ally a constitutional state since 1834, but she was ruled 
in fact by a succession of cliques and military dictators. 
Portugal, nominally constitutional since 1826, was in 
much the same condition. Neither of these countries 
can in any real sense be described as self-governing, be- 
cause in neither was the people sufficiently educated to 
be able to use the machinery that had been set up. 
Greece had obtained a parliamentary system in 1843, 
but it had been made futile by the policy of the Ger- 
man prince, Otho of Bavaria, who occupied the Greek 
throne ; and he was able thus to use the representative 
machinery, in the Prussian manner, as a sort of veil for 



§4 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

absolutism, mainly because the people were not yet 
educated into the capacity for self-government. In the 
Austrian Empire, and in all the Italian states save 
Sardinia, a brutal and blind reaction was triumphant. 
In Russia and the Turkish Empire the supremacy of 
despotism had not yet been even shaken. Yet it was a 
real success which these forty years had achieved. In 
all the most progressive states the principle of popular 
participation in government had been, however grudg- 
ingly, accepted. 

These successes were, for the most part, due to the 
leadership of the middle classes, and they represented, 
on the whole, a victory for middle-class ideas, and especi- 
ally for the ideas of the energetic classes of capitalist 
entrepreneurs who were everywhere guiding the fortunes 
of the new industries. They desired a share in govern- 
ment partly, of course, because the spirit of liberty was 
working in them. But they desired it also as a means 
of securing the removal of vexatious restrictions upon 
the operation of the potent new forces which they con- 
trolled. Freedom for them meant, in a pre-eminent 
degree, economic freedom, the withdrawal of restraints 
upon industry. They did not wish for political power in 
order that they might use it for the construction of a new 
social order, because they did not believe in the deliberate 
design or regulation of social activities by the state ; in 
their view the new order would grow most healthily if 
it was left to itself. This view was most strongly held 
in Britain, where the influence of the industrial-capita- 
list class was more powerful than anywhere else ; and 
in Britain this was pre-eminently the age of ' Manches- 
terism ' and of laisser-faire. But the same attitude was 
perceptible in all the other lands where the industrial 
change was at work, though in other countries it was 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTION 95 

qualified and restrained by the surviving power of the 
old ruling elements, and by the tradition of strong 
government. 

Essentially this attitude implied a new definition of 
political liberty, according to which that community is 
most free where the government has least power to inter- 
fere with or control the action of individuals. The free 
State, on this definition, ought not to be regarded as a 
self-governing organic society responsible for the well- 
being of all its parts ; on the contrary, its members, as 
free individuals, should be held wholly responsible for 
their own well-being, and the State ought to be no more 
than an ' association ' of individuals for the purpose of 
meeting a minimum of common needs, the maintenance 
of order, the protection of life and property, the defence 
of the whole body against foreign attack. Its business 
ought to be, mainly, to ' hold the ring,' and let the 
natural forces, interests, and ideas which are at work 
in the community work themselves out in free competi- 
tion : ' a free field, and no favour, and the devil take the 
hindmost.' Such an attitude was natural to those who 
drew the greatest profit from the new industrial move- 
ments. But it minimised the value and functions of 
organised society to an extent never known before. 

It is neither just nor true to say, what is often said, 
that the exponents of these ' individualist ' and essentially 
anti-social ideas were governed exclusively by considera- 
tions of their own material interests. Such a judgment, 
like any judgment which fixes its attention solely upon 
the materialist aspects of human life, is profoundly false 
and misleading. The individualist creed of the mid- 
nineteenth century was inspired; among its best advo- 
cates (and it is only by its best advocates that any doctrine 
can fairly be judged) by a genuine belief in liberty, and 



96 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

in the value of human personality, a genuine fear lest 
the vigour and initiative of the individual, which is the 
source of all progress, should be diminished or hampered 
by excessive regulation or cosseting. Its best advo- 
cates were confident that, left to themselves in freedom, 
rational men were far more likely to work out for them- 
selves in the long run conditions favourable to general 
well-being than if fallible politicians of limited outlook 
were to attempt to determine beforehand the unpredict- 
able development of human society. And the individual- 
ist period achieved certain results which could scarcely 
have been attained by men who had a less robust faith 
in individuality, a less whole-hearted distrust of central- 
ised control. They established freedom of the Press, the 
utmost freedom of discussion, freedom of association 
among individuals for all legitimate common purposes, 
whether these were in accord with the dominant ideas of 
ruling politicians or not, freedom of religious belief and 
religious practice, freedom of access to knowledge for all 
who aspired after it, or could by their own efforts devise 
the means to attain it. These were great things, and the 
individualist theorists who laboured to secure them made 
real contributions to the rise of a richer conception of 
liberty which was to follow them. And if it be true that 
the regime of almost unrestricted competition was extra- 
ordinarily unfair to the weak, and gave every advantage 
to the strong, at least it is fair to remember that this was 
in some degree recognised. One of the first enactments 
of the middle-class Parliament of Britain in 1833 was a 
Factory Act ; and although the development of the code 
of regulations for industry was timid and slow, yet there 
was development, and its slowness was not due wholly, 
or even mainly, to the self-interest of the ' exploiting ' 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 97 

classes, but largely to an honest distrust of interference 
with individual liberty. 

It was inevitable that there should be reaction against 
this individualist doctrine, this extraordinarily narrow 
conception of the duties of society to its members ; 
inevitable that the ' hindmost,' whom the prevalent creed 
so lightly consigned to the care of ' the devil,' should 
resent this fate, and demand that society should take a 
less ruthless view of its responsibilities to its own members 
— especially as, in every community, the ' hindmost * 
proved to be a great majority of the whole citizen body. 
And there was a strong under-current of reaction through- 
out all this period. It found expression in many quarters. 
In Britain, where the new industrial development was 
furthest advanced, it inspired much of the writing of 
Carlyle, of Ruskin, and of Maurice, Kingsley and the 
other Christian Socialists. But there was little that was 
positive and constructive about this thinking. For the 
most part, it went no further than a general denunciation 
of laisser-faire, and an active sympathy with schemes for 
social betterment. It did not imply any clearly wrought- 
out theory of the functions of the State. In some cases, 
as with Carlyle, it was actually hostile to the idea of self* 
government, and demanded rather ' kingship,' after the 
Prussian model, imposing ' discipline ' from above. 

More fruitful, because more in contact with the facts, 
were the working-class movements of the time ; for they 
were gradually working their way towards a new doctrine. 
They were deeply influenced by the crude beginnings of 
the Socialist theory — the theory that it is the duty of 
the State to undertake the organisation of the material 
basis of its citizens' lives and not merely to leave it to 
chance, as the individualist doctrine required. Although 

a 



98 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

the actual demands of the Chartists were purely political 
in character, many of them demanded political power for 
the working class in order that they might have the 
means of putting this conception into practice. The 
British working classes of the 'thirties were profoundly 
influenced by the teachings of the father of modern 
Socialism, Robert Owen. Owen was a very successful 
cotton manufacturer, who, impressed by the evil results 
of an unmitigated system of capitalist control, had 
carried out, among the workpeople of his own factory at 
New Lanark, a series of social reforms which were ex- 
tremely successful, and attracted the admiration of all 
who saw them. On the basis of this experience he 
constructed a scheme for the reorganisation of society, 
whereunder the State was to divide its citizens into co- 
operative groups of from five hundred to two thousand, 
each group owning its own means of production. It was 
a fantastic and unworkable scheme, based upon quite 
unsound philosophical ideas. But it was the first serious 
attempt to work out a method for bringing the organised 
strength of society to bear in order to secure healthy con- 
ditions of life and labour for its members. It proclaimed 
the ideal of the State as a power that should not merely 
' hold the ring ' while evil and good forces struggled for 
supremacy, but should deliberately labour to secure the 
well-being of all its citizens. And this conception of the 
State as a great partnership for the organisation of good 
living was in effect a new conception in the modern 
world, and therefore very valuable in spite of the fan- 
tastic forms which it assumed. It might have been, and 
indeed was, the beginning of a national discussion of the 
ultimate aims of a free, self-governing society. 

Almost contemporary with Owen, a number of French 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 99 

writers — St. Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, Cabet — were 
working out similar Utopias, or schemes of social recon- 
struction, which were, for the most part, even more 
crude than those of Owen, and which, like his, generally 
aimed at the organisation of little self-sufficient com- 
munities within the State. They even made experiments 
in the foundation of such communities, especially in 
America ; but all the experiments promptly broke down, 
mainly because their authors had disregarded the unity 
and interrelations of the whole complex fabric of modern 
society. It was with the Frenchman, Louis Blanc, whose 
Organisation de Travail was published in 1839, that the 
new doctrine first embodied the assertion of the necessity 
of wholesale and drastic State action in the reorganisation 
of large-scale industrial methods. Blanc's theories had 
great influence during the next ten years. They contri- 
buted largely to the ferment which produced the revolu- 
tion of 1848. An attempt was made to put them into 
operation during the confusion of 1848 in Paris. It was 
ill-managed, and failed disastrously, partly because the 
conditions were extremely unfavourable, partly because 
the new doctrines had received no adequate discussion 
such as would have demonstrated their defects, while 
the men who tried to apply them had no training in 
co-operation. Significantly enough, the chief result of 
this premature experiment was to make men welcome 
the despotism of Napoleon in. as a safeguard against 
disorder. 

But towards the close of our period, on the very eve of 
the revolution of 1848, the Socialist doctrine began to 
take on an altogether new colour from the teachings 
of Karl Marx, which were henceforth to affect very 
deeply the character and aims of the democratic 



100 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

movement in most European countries ; they affect it 
still to-day. Marx was a middle-class German-Jew, a 
philosopher trained in the German universities, who had 
no experience of industrial life, whether on the side of 
labour or of management ; a pure theorist, with a German 
love of cut-and-dried formulae. He spent the best part 
of his life in England, a refugee from the tyranny of his 
native Prussia, but he was never able to understand the 
spirit and working of British institutions. His greatest 
book, Das Kapital, was not published until long after 
this date, and was indeed not completed at the time of 
his death in 1883. But already before the Revolution of 
1848 he had worked out his main ideas. They were em- 
bodied in the ' Communist Manifesto,' which he wrote in 
1847 for the Communist Union, reorganised in that year. 

The motto of the ' Communist Manifesto ' was ' Prole- 
tarians of all lands, unite ' ; and in this motto was already 
proclaimed the essence of the Marxian creed, in so far as 
it was a programme of action. 

Manifestly, this motto repudiated the national idea : 
the idea of a sentiment of unity overriding the diver- 
gencies of class and interest which divide a community, 
and holding before them all the aim of the common 
good. The existence of such a sentiment, as we have 
seen, forms the only practicable basis for self-government 
on the national scale. But the national idea naturally 
had little appeal for Marx. Not only was he a Jew, 
sharing that aloofness from national feelings and tradi- 
tions which marks many Jews ; but he was permanently 
exiled from the land of his birth, and permanently out of 
sympathy with the ideas of the land which had given 
him protection. Instead of desiring to strengthen this 
sentiment of unity which we call nationality, he desired 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 101 

rather to destroy it, by stimulating in all lands an intense 
hostility, an unending and relentless ' Class War ' be- 
tween the bourgeoisie or middle class, whom he rather 
arbitrarily defined as the capitalist class, and the wage- 
earning operatives whom he described as Proletarians. 
From his time onwards, the Socialist doctrine has been, 
among many of its adherents in all countries, no longer 
what it had been with earlier Socialists, a progressive 
body of theory as to the way in which nations might 
healthily order their affairs ; it has been too often simply 
a proclamation of unceasing and relentless warfare, 
aiming at no clearly defined end save the defeat and 
dethronement of the existing dominant classes by the 
' Proletarians,' and the establishment of a ' Proletarian 
Dictatorship.' This sterile and unattractive aim was not, 
indeed, the essential element in Marx's teaching, properly 
regarded. But it was the part of it which was most 
easily grasped, and most readily put into action. It was, 
in the nature of things, inconsistent with the ideal of 
growing unity and growing equality which is of the 
essence of the democratic idea. And the end which it 
seemed to propose, that of the mere replacement of the 
rule of one class by that of another, instead of the co- 
operation of all (despite their differences) for the common 
advantage, was a fundamentally undemocratic end. 

The greatness of Marx (for in some ways he was a 
great man and a great thinker) was that he insisted upon 
regarding the whole social movement as a historical de- 
velopment, conditioned by the facts of history. But his 
view of human history was the most purely materialistic 
that any reputable thinker has ever propounded. It was 
what is called a ' realist ' view, like the equally ugly 
Bealpolitik of the ruling classes of Prussia which had 



102 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

driven him into exile. For hirn the material factor, the 
struggle for wealth, had always been and must always 
be the sole ruling factor in human life. This was a view 
strangely contradicted by his own long life of ill-rewarded 
study and devotion to an unpopular cause. Putting 
aside, as of no account among human motives, the love 
of God and the love of man, the zeal of martyrs and the 
sacrifices of patriots, the desire for justice, the passion 
of freedom, and the zest of adventure, he saw in human 
history nothing but an unending struggle between classes 
for the control of the sources of wealth. First the Feudal 
class had dominated ; now the Capitalist class held the 
upper hand ; against them the extruded Proletarian 
class, in all lands, must declare an undying and pitiless 
war. Superficially, of course, Marx's view is supported 
by the facts : it is a part of the truth, misleading unless 
regarded alongside of other parts of the truth. There 
have always been, and there perhaps always will be, 
conflicts in human society between rival classes and rival 
interests, and out of these conflicts progress has come. 
But cutting across these, there have been other conflicts, 
greater because less materialist, the conflict between the 
claims of individual liberty and the claims of that autho- 
rity which seems necessary for the common weal, the 
conflict between rival religious ideas, between various 
political conceptions, between ideals and material in- 
terests. And in all these conflicts, the conflict of classes 
equally with the rest, right has never lain wholly on one 
side, nor have the lines of division between rival parties 
or interests ever been sharp and clear-cut. There is a 
sense in which class-war (or, to use a less question-begging 
term, class-conflict) is not only an inevitable but a healthy 
feature of the life of every living society : it is the natural 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 103 

and proper tendency of every class to strive for improved 
status, for the recognition of its value to the common 
weal, and for the opportunities of fuller life for its 
members. The aim of such conflict, rightly conceived, 
should be to reduce so far as possible the division between 
classes, and to create a greater equality of treatment ; 
and it will naturally draw reinforcement from many 
other struggling causes which have in themselves no 
direct relation to the economic war. This is a very 
different aim from the aim of rigidifying and emphasising 
class distinctions, with a view to the ultimate substitution 
of the ascendancy of one embittered class for that of 
another, which seemed to many of its upholders to be 
the essence of Marx's doctrine. Hence the Marxian view, 
which paid no regard to any conflict save the materialist 
conflict of economic classes, and which assumed that in 
this conflict, so far as right and wrong were involved at 
all, the right was all on one side, was an essentially false 
view, fundamentally reactionary and undemocratic. 

Materialism is nearly always closely allied with fatalism, 
and Marx combined with his materialist view of history 
a curiously fatalistic view of the future course of economic 
development. He held that capitalism must lead to an 
increasing unification of industries, and in this idea 
(which he borrowed from Louis Blanc), events have in 
some degree justified him. He held that wealth must 
gradually be concentrated in a smaller and smaller 
number of hands ; here the facts have been dead against 
him, for one of the features of the last two generations 
has been a rapid increase in the number not only of 
large but of moderate fortunes. He held that the con- 
dition of the working classes must become steadily more 
miserable, and this anticipation also has been utterly 



104 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

falsified by the facts, in all countries. His conclusion 
was that capitalism contained the seeds of its own ruin ; 
that the moment must come when it would be easily 
overthrown ; and that the Proletarian class must organise 
itself, and train itself by unresting war, so as to be able 
to seize this moment when it came, by taking command 
of the State and assuming the control of all capital. He 
did not, apparently, see that even State-owned capital 
must be managed by somebody ; and that a new class-war 
must promptly begin, on his own principles, between the 
bureaucrats who would manage, and the still ' Proletarian ' 
class who must work under their direction for a wage. He 
did not in the least degree foresee what has actually come 
about — the increasing diffusion of ownership of capital, 
so that a large proportion even of his Proletarian class 
have themselves become in a modest way capitalists. 
He did not foresee the immense funds of capital that 
would be wielded by co-operative groups of workpeople. 
He did not foresee the process whereby most holders of 
capital are in an increasing degree becoming also wage- 
earners, and many wage-earners holders of capital, so 
that his arbitrarily differentiated classes are increasingly 
melting into one another. The time is coming, it would 
seem, when we shall all be wage-earners, and all owners 
of capital, as well as all citizens of the State. 

But, in truth, Marx gave no clear idea of how the future 
State was to be arranged, except that it was to own all 
capital and to be controlled by the Proletarian class. It 
was no part of his aim to set an ideal before his followers. 
To do that would be only to construct another Utopia, 
and he was the sworn enemy of Utopias, that is, of 
clearly grasped ideals for the future. When the English 
Radical, Professor Beesley, wrote an article on ' The 
Future of the Working Classes,' Marx wrote to him that 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 105 

he must henceforth be regarded as a reactionary, since 
only reactionaries laid plans for a better state of things 
in the future ! There was no place in his philosophy for 
human design springing from good-will. Class-war for 
its own sake, and the rejection of all illusions about 
patriotism, national unity, or the co-operation of different 
types and different schools of thought to produce an in- 
creasing well-being : class-war between artificially defined 
classes, whose differences must be intensified and empha- 
sised in order that their warfare might be intensified — 
that was the most effective part of his message to his age. 

The doctrines of Marx have been riddled by the criti- 
cism not only of his opponents but of his followers ; 
the economic movement of the age has falsified most 
of his predictions ; the national spirit has proved 
enormously more potent than he supposed. But still the 
doctrine of class-war as he preached it exercises its 
malignant influence : the doctrine of class-war, not as a 
necessary evil, but as a thing to be desired and fomented, 
as something that must go on aimlessly until, suddenly, 
and in some unrealised way, it shall bring about an un- 
foreseen and unprepared millennium. That is not any- 
where to-day the doctrine of enlightened Socialists, but 
it everywhere gets a ready hearing, and it has left its 
trail even over the thinking of the most intelligent. 

Thus over against the narrow and limited doctrine 
of Individualism, which nevertheless was not a rigidly 
defined creed, but was capable of expansion, and which 
in any case did aim, however mistakenly, at the supposed 
welfare of the whole, Marx substituted a still more narrow 
and more limited creed : a creed which, while it vaguely 
promised an ultimate undefined millennium, seemed to 
forbid its followers to think of the common weal, or to 
make plans for the future, and preached the value of 



106 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

economic war for its own sake, just as the supporters of 
Prussian government preached the value of national war 
for its own sake. Was this to be the new form of the 
movement towards self-government — this ideal of Class- 
War leading to Class -Ascendancy ? If so, the end of it 
must be a tyranny more unhappy than any of the older 
class -ascendancies, since these at least had been, what 
this could never be, the willingly accepted rule of a class 
which formed the natural leaders in a unified society. 
Thus it was not only against despotism, and the en- 
trenched dominion of dominant classes, that the cause 
of national self-government must henceforth fight ; it 
must fight also against the distortion of its own aims 
into something as ugly as that against which it was 
already fighting. That issue was already emerging before 
the close of the period of Liberal Revolutions. 

It is interesting to note the answer almost immedi- 
ately given to it in Britain. In 1851 was founded the 
Amalgamated Society of Engineers, the first trade union 
of a new type, which incorporated a number of local and 
conflicting bodies, and undertook the direction of the 
interests of the operatives in a whole great industry 
throughout the country. It was soon followed by other 
similar bodies, which were now so powerful that all 
employers must take account of them, and which were, 
therefore, able almost to take a share in the management 
of their respective industries, so far as concerned rates of 
wages and the hours and conditions of labour. Here 
was, in a sense, 'class-war.' But it was class-war of 
the most legitimate type ; it aimed at obtaining recogni- 
tion, status and decent conditions for the operative class 
by a reasonable process of discussion and bargaining with 
their employers. The leaders of these great trade unions 
achieved very striking success. But they did it by 



THE ERA OF LIBERAL REVOLUTIONS 107 

definitely limiting their activity to the sphere with which 
they were immediately concerned, and which they fully 
understood. They did not declare war a ouirance, war 
for its own sake, against the whole existing order of 
society, for the attainment of a remote and unanalysed 
end. They faced the facts as they were, and made the 
best of them. And they won for their own organisations 
a sort of partnership in the management of industry, 
not by any means complete, capable of great expansion, 
but promising very fruitful future developments. They 
took no direct part in public affairs ; these, as yet, seemed 
to be the field of other conflicts, distinct from the 
economic conflicts of the workshop, and on these their 
members were free to take what side they liked. But 
their work afforded both to leaders and to rank and file 
a training in the practice of self-government, in give-and- 
take, in the subordination of self to common interests, 
in the habit of recognising the element of right that is 
always to be found on the other side ; a training quite 
invaluable for the time, now close at hand, when their 
members should play their part as fully enfranchised 
citizens in the self-governing nation. When they did so, 
it was to take part not in a single all-embracing conflict 
of classes in the economic field, such as Marx envisaged, 
but in the multiform and complex conflicts of ideas, 
interests and aims which form the life of any living 
society, and in which no free man ought to feel that his 
attitude is irrevocably dictated to him beforehand by the 
accident of his birth or occupation. 

It long remained a complaint among the Marxians 
that Britain, in which Marx spent most of his life, was 
less influenced by his ideas than any o v her European 
country. Had not the traditions of British self-govern- 
ment something to do with this ? 



VII 

THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 

1850-1878 

There are several very marked contrasts between the 
period of Liberal Revolutions with which we have just 
dealt, and the period of National Unification which 
immediately followed it. During the first period, as we 
have seen, there was an incessant internal ferment in 
nearly all the European countries, and especially in the 
more developed countries of Western and Central Europe ; 
and this ferment found vent in an extraordinary series 
of revolutionary upheavals. During the second period 
there were indeed revolutions in Poland and Greece 
in 1863 ; but apart from the bloody and futile frenzy 
of the Paris Commune in 1871, the more advanced 
states of the West, great and small, were extraordi- 
narily free from internal upheavals. Spontaneous 
revolution from below seemed to have become vieux 
jeu, and reformers appeared to have learned to look to 
other means of remedying the evils from which they 
suffered. This quiescence became still more marked 
during the next era, 1878-1900. 

But, on the other hand, while there had been no formal 
wars of any magnitude between civilised states in the 
period 1815-50, the following generation was filled with 
great wars. There were the Crimean War of 1853-56, 
the Italian campaigns of 1859-60, the war of Prussia and 

108 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 109 

Austria against Denmark in 1864, the Austro -Prussian 
War of 1866, the Franco-German War of 1870-71, and 
the Russo-Turkish War of 1878. All these wars arose, 
directly or indirectly, out of the movement for national 
unity and freedom, and the Polish revolt of 1863 was 
due to the same cause. Nationalism, rather than 
Liberalism, was thus the dominant factor in this era. 
Yet one of the chief results of this period of warfare 
between organised states was an expansion of the institu- 
tions of self-government far more remarkable than had 
come about during the period of Liberal Revolutions ; 
and in the event most of the European states found them- 
selves by 1878 equipped with systems of government 
which were to prove lasting and stable. In the main 
European states, putting aside the vexed and backward 
areas of the East and South-east, there have been com- 
paratively few political changes of importance since that 
year. And we may thus fairly say that the era of 
National Unification was also the era of constitutional 
settlement, so far as the principal states were concerned. 
It is important that we should realise the close connection 
which exists between these things — between the triumph 
of nationalism on the one hand, and on the other the 
decay of revolutionism and the stable settlement of 
constitutional problems. 

To begin with, the triumph of the nationalist move- 
ment in such divided states as Germany and Italy got 
rid of one of the weaknesses which had affected the reform 
movements in the previous age, by putting an end to 
the conflict between the national and the liberal ideas 
which, as we have seen, had often been the undoing 
of both. This weakness still survived in such a state 
as Austria-Hungary, where the nationalist movement 



110 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

achieved no clear success ; but it disappeared elsewhere. 
At the same time, national unity provided one of the 
essential foundations of self-government — unity of senti- 
ment among those who took part in it, and this unity of 
sentiment was especially strong where men had been 
combined by the trials of a common struggle, and the 
exaltation of a common victory. This is perhaps the 
main reason for the successful working of the institutions 
set up in the new nation-states. 

In the second place, the leadership in the successful 
national movements of this period was assumed in each 
case by established governments, commanding the organ- 
ised force of their states. It was the military strength 
of the kingdom of Sardinia, backed by the armies of 
France, which freed Italy from the yoke of Austria, 
though this result could not have been fully attained if 
the national spirit had not been at work already through- 
out Italy. It was the military strength of Prussia which 
enabled Bismarck to unify first the North German Con- 
federation, and then the whole German Empire, under 
Prussian leadership, though even Bismarck's victories 
would not have been so easily won, and certainly their 
results would not have been so enthusiastically accepted, 
if the national spirit had not already been stimulated 
throughout all Germany. And this activity of govern- 
ments in the popular cause affected the liberal move- 
ment in two ways. On the one hand, it undermined or 
destroyed the hostility which had been felt towards exist- 
ing governments by the leaders of the reforming parties, 
while at the same time it brought home to them the 
strength of organised military power, the futility of 
fighting against it, and the importance of making terms 
with it ; so that those who had been in the earlier period 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 111 

the sworn foes of kings and their ministers, were ready for 
an alliance with them, now that they had assumed 
national leadership. On the other hand, governments 
themselves were taught by the experience of the national 
wars to realise the strength they could derive from 
popular support, and were therefore ready to make terms 
with their former foes, and to buy their support by the 
concession of self-governing institutions, either frankly 
and fully, as in Italy, or with reserves and exceptions 
which would nullify the concessions, as in Germany. 
For these reasons the period of nationalist wars brought 
about an alliance in the newly united nations between 
their governments and the old reforming parties, which 
were mainly of middle -class origin. 

A further cause strengthened this tendency. By the 
middle of the nineteenth century the industrial move- 
ment which had started in Britain had taken hold of the 
more advanced continental countries. The classes mainly 
responsible for the direction of the new industries, there- 
fore, became distrustful of revolutionary disturbances, 
because they needed internal order. On the other hand, 
governments could no longer disregard the makers of new 
national wealth, or any longer exclude them from a voice 
in the direction of national affairs. Hence the economic 
factor formed another force contributing to bring about 
an alliance between governments and the middle class ; 
and the form which this alliance took was everywhere the 
establishment of a parliamentary system on the British 
model. Even where these parliamentary systems were 
based upon universal suffrage, they were controlled, 
during this period and for a long time afterwards, by the 
men of the middle class, because they were better edu- 
cated, had more leisure for politics, and possessed larger 



112 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

resources for political warfare. Hence those among the 
leaders of working-class revolt who were disciples of 
Marx were for a time tempted to regard parliamentary 
institutions as a peculiarly middle-class and ' capitalistic ' 
device, though they had no very clear ideas what they 
would substitute for them. 

But the working-class or proletarian agitations were not 
as yet very formidable, or likely to disturb the stability of 
the new order. It is true that it was during this period 
that the Marxian creed began to exercise a wide influence 
throughout Europe, and that Social Democratic parties, 
devoted to the ' Class-War ' began to be formed. In 1864 
the International Workmen's Association was founded 
in London, with an inaugural address from Karl Marx, 
and a constitution drawn up by him. Its object was to 
be the carrying out of Marx's doctrines, and it was to 
have frequent international congresses, and branches in 
all countries. But its members and its branches were 
always few ; and it had to be wound up in 1876. In 
1868 the Anarchist Bakunin founded a rival International 
Association to forward the class-war by the more direct 
means of violence, and the quarrels of these two bodies 
helped to weaken both. There were other movements, 
also, of the same kind, notably in Germany : in 1863 the 
brilliant German-Jewish philosopher and epicure, Ferdi- 
nand Lassalle, floated a General German Workers' Union, 
of which something might have come if its able founder 
had not got himself shot in a duel about his love-affairs 
with a Countess ; in 1868 the German Social Democratic 
Labour Party was established under the leadership of 
Bebel, to carry into effect the programme of Marx ; and 
there were similar movements in other countries, mostly 
ineffective. The Marxian class-war which, if conducted 



TH£ ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 113 

in accordance with its founder's ideas, would have de- 
stroyed national unity everywhere, was thus inaugurated 
during the period of National Unification. But one of 
the main reasons for its very modest success was just the 
fact that, to workmen equally with others, the national 
idea made an immensely powerful appeal ; and govern- 
ments found they could safely proscribe the movement, 
and did so, almost everywhere save in Britain, where the 
tradition of free discussion was too deeply rooted to 
be disregarded. So the triumph of the parliamentary 
system was in no way modified by the progress of the 
Marxian movement, whose advocates soon realised that 
their best chance of success was in working through 
Parliament. 

It was not only in the countries where the national 
cause had triumphed that these forces were at work. In 
those countries also which had to suffer defeat in the 
wars of nationality, the result was everywhere an ex- 
pansion of parliamentary institutions ; because the exist- 
ing governments, discredited by defeat, were no longer 
able to offer effective resistance to the demand for self- 
government. In Denmark, for example, the disasters of 
1864 forced the Crown to accept a real parliamentary 
system. In Austria the discredit arising from the Italian 
campaign of 1859 led to lively political agitation from 
1860 onwards, and the crushing defeat which Austria had 
to accept from Prussia in 1866 was quickly followed by 
a great constitutional change in 1867. In France the 
humiliations of the Franco-Prussian War led to the down- 
fall of the Napoleonic Empire in 1870, and to the establish- 
ment of the democratic Third Republic. Finally, partly 
under the influence of the prevailing fashion, partly as a 
natural development of what had been already achieved, 

H 



il4 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

States not directly affected by the wars of nationality 
introduced changes in their political systems. Britain 
took a long step towards complete democracy in 1867. 
Even Russia began the process of reform, though she did 
not go very far. 

It is impossible to analyse all the political changes 
of these years ; and, indeed, such an analysis would be 
merely wearisome, and would contribute little to our com- 
prehension of the problems of self-government, unless it 
was carried out in very great detail. We shall therefore 
content ourselves, in the first place, with a bald catalogue- 
summary of the political changes of the period, which 
will serve to show the universality of the movement ; 
and, in the second place, with an analysis of the differ- 
ences of form assumed by the parliamentary system in a 
few of the leading states. 

In 1859-61, in 1866, and in 1871 the various separately 
governed provinces of Italy were successively united to 
the kingdom of Sardinia. To each group of new pro- 
vinces the privileges of the Sardinian representative 
system were extended, so that in 1871 Italy as a whole 
emerged as a single nation-state governed by a limited 
monarchy whose ministers were responsible to Parliament, 
as in Britain. 

In the years between 1858 and 1863, Russia, hitherto 
practically untouched by the liberal movement, took the 
first steps towards a system of self-government by freeing 
the serfs, by making the law courts independent of the 
administration, and, above all, by setting up a series of 
zemstva, or county councils, for the management of local 
affairs. It was the hope of Liberals that these reforms 
would be followed by the establishment of a representa- 
tive parliament. This hope, however, was disappointed ; 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 115 

an unhappy reaction undid much of the work already 
done, and Russia had to wait until the twentieth century 
for the beginnings of national self-government. But it 
is significant that even Russia was during this period of 
organisation affected in some degree by the universal 
movement. 

In 1866 Sweden substituted for her old-fashioned 
mediaeval estates a modern parliament of two Houses, 
one elected on a narrow, the other on a wide suffrage. 
In the same year, the King of Denmark, having endured 
defeat at the hands of Prussia, had to submit to the 
establishment of a real parliamentary system, closely 
resembling that of Sweden. In both of these Scan- 
dinavian countries the two Houses were given a legal 
equality ; and under cover of this fact the Crown in both 
countries, supported by the less popular chamber, was 
able to retain personal control over the appointment and 
dismissal of ministers. But this led to unceasing con- 
stitutional strife. It took an especially acute form in 
Norway, where a very democratic parliament resented 
the independent control over the appointment of ministers 
claimed by the Swedish king. Throughout the period 
under review, however, the Crown was able in all three 
countries to make good its claims, and even to levy 
taxes in defiance of the hostility of the Lower Houses. 
The Scandinavian systems, therefore, down to 1878 and 
later, resembled the Prussian rather than the British model. 

From 1862 to 1866 the Prussian monarchy was engaged 
in a fierce struggle with its Parliament, which ended in a 
complete victory for the Crown. This struggle forms so 
important a landmark in the history of European self- 
government that we shall have to consider it more closely 
later. In 1866, after the defeat of Austria by Prussia, the 



116 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

North German Confederation was organised as a con- 
solidated federal State, with a Parliament of two Houses ; 
and in 1871 this Confederation, with the addition of the 
South German states, became the German Empire. In 
the Confederation and in the Empire, as in the Prussian 
kingdom, the control over national policy was retained 
by the Crown, and was not allowed to pass under the 
influence of Parliament. This decision was of vital 
moment for the future history of Europe. 

Between 1861 and 1867 the Austrian Empire, hitherto 
the most obstinate foe of liberalism, also succumbed, at 
any rate in form, to the liberal movement. After several 
experiments between 1861 and 1865, its system of govern- 
ment was finally determined by the Ausgleich or Com- 
promise of 1867, whereby full parliamentary systems 
were established in the two parts of the Dual Monarchy. 
But, as we shall see, parliamentary institutions did not 
bring to the majority of the population an increase of 
liberty ; they were rather turned into a mechanism for 
securing the tyrannical supremacy of two minorities — the 
Magyars in Hungary, the Germans in the Austrian lands. 
And the main cause of this was the absence of national 
unity. 

Britain, the oldest of the self-governing nations, and 
the model for all the rest, took during these years what 
some of her statesmen thought ' a leap in the dark ' 
when by the Reform Act of 1867 she placed her destinies 
in the hands of the democracy by enfranchising the 
artisans of the towns. She did not, indeed, go so far as 
France had gone in 1848 and Prussia in 1850, and in- 
stitute universal suffrage. Following her traditions, she 
admitted to a partnership in government only those classes 
which had already shown in their trade unions, their 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 117 

friendly societies, and their co-operative societies, that 
they shared the capacity for managing common affairs 
by discussion and agreement. But to these classes she 
made no grudging concession. They obtained the power, 
if they chose to use it, of controlling through their repre- 
sentatives the whole conduct and spirit of national policy ; 
whereas the wielders of universal suffrage in Prussia and 
in Napoleonic France were allowed no more than a shadow 
of power. 

But France, also, the supreme apostle of the gospel of 
political liberty, was now at last, after so many endeavours 
and so many disappointments, to be added to the list of 
fully self-governing countries. Before the onslaught of 
the Prussian in 1870-71 the imperial system crumbled 
into ruins. But out of her disasters France arose, 
sobered and sorrowful, stripped of all illusions ; and 
without any sweeping assertions of principle, organised 
in the Third Republic a system wherein, for the first 
time in all her history, the people were enabled really to 
control the direction of national policy. 

The infection of parliamentarism also captured during 
these years the infant states of the Balkan peninsula. 
Greece had possessed a Parliament since 1843, but in 
1863, in the course of the revolution by which she got 
rid of the Bavarian dynasty, she revised her constitution 
and gave greater powers to her Parliament. Nominally 
it has had full control of the national government since 
that date. The two Rumanian provinces of Moldavia 
and Wallachia had been equipped with representative 
councils by the Congress of Paris in 1856 ; these councils 
were combined in 1862, and in 1866, under a new consti- 
tution, they were replaced by a two-chamber legislature 
of the Western pattern, with a nominal control over the 



118 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

ministry. In 1869, Serbia instituted a single chamber 
assembly, known as the Skuptshina and elected by 
practically universal suffrage. In 1878, when Bulgaria 
had obtained by the gift of Russia her freedom from the 
Turkish yoke, she also set up a supreme single-chamber 
legislature, the Sobranje. Nominally all these Balkan 
Parliaments exercised full control over the executive, 
but, in fact, the backwardness and the illiteracy of the 
majority of the electorate left them a prey to many 
corrupt influences ; the government in power continued 
to be generally secure of a majority ; and the ruling 
prince could usually wield a degree of independent autho- 
rity far more extensive than is suggested by the formal 
provisions of the constitution. These dangers were, 
however, scarcely perceived during our period, when 
men were easily satisfied with the mere forms of self- 
government. 

Lastly, Spain completed the long, confused tale of her 
constitutional experiments by establishing the constitu- 
tion of 1869, whereby she set up a two-chamber legis- 
lature, the Lower House elected by universal suffrage. 
This machinery has been applied first to a limited 
monarchy, then for a brief interval (1873-74) to a republic, 
and finally to a restored monarchy, which has now existed 
for forty years, a longer spell than any system has 
enjoyed in Spain since the close of the Bourbon despotism 
in 1834. It cannot, however, be said that Spain has ever 
become in a real sense a self-governing country. Universal 
suffrage among an ignorant and backward populace has 
meant that the influences which can be exercised by the 
government in power will always ensure a majority ; and 
by giving supremacy to an electorate which is incapable 
of realising the nature of its responsibilities Spain has, 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 119 

in fact, like France in the years following 1848, and most 
of the Balkan states to-day, made herself the prey of 
corrupting influences of many types. 

This is a very impressive catalogue of political changes 
brought about in nearly all the states of Europe within 
a single generation ; and in summary it amounted to 
this, that in every country which had not already acquired 
them, save only Russia and Turkey, parliamentary in- 
stitutions were established during this generation. And 
with parliamentary institutions came, as their invariable 
accompaniment, a very large degree of freedom of speech 
and of freedom of the Press, together with the universal 
establishment, wherever it did not already exist, of 
religious toleration. 

The institutions thus rapidly set up, which had become 
the marks of a civilised government, were everywhere 
superficially of the same pattern, because they were 
everywhere modelled on those of Britain, the inventor 
of parliamentary government. Almost everywhere there 
were two chambers, the sole exceptions being Serbia and 
Bulgaria ; but the constitution of the Upper Chambers 
varied widely, and no country in this respect reproduced 
the British model. Everywhere the Lower Chamber was 
elected on a democratic basis — usually by universal 
(manhood) suffrage ; and everywhere the assent of both 
Houses was required for new legislation, while the Lower 
Chamber (as in Britain) was given a special authority in 
regard to taxation. But there was one important, and 
quite inevitable, departure from the British model. Since 
in every case, save in Britain, the new Parliaments were 
deliberately created with clearly defined powers, they all 
had their constitutions and powers laid down in written 
documents. In no case was the constitution made so 



120 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

difficult to alter as the American, the first modern 
example of a deliberately created system ; but there was 
always some distinction drawn between the process by 
which ordinary laws were passed and the process by 
which changes in the fundamental constitution could be 
made. Hence none of the new systems had the rather 
bewildering elasticity and adaptability of the British 
system. In some of the new systems an attempt was 
made, following the American model, to define a ' division 
of powers ' between the executive and the legislature. 
France, indeed, warned by her experience of 1848, did 
not repeat this blunder, but, by making the executive 
fully dependent upon the representative body, followed 
as closely as possible the British model. But in Germany 
the executive was kept definitely independent of the 
legislature ; and as the head of the executive was a 
hereditary monarch, not, as in America, a popularly 
elected President, this meant that the public control over 
government was very materially restricted. Even Ger- 
many did not make the mistake of severing its executive 
chiefs from direct contact with the legislature ; though 
not drawn from among its ordinary members, nor holding 
their places by its favour, they were empowered to be 
present at its sessions, and to speak in explanation of the 
policy they were pursuing. 

It would be easy to extend the analysis of the differ- 
ences in detail which distinguished the new systems one 
from another : each of them was marked by some special 
features, arising from the conditions of the nation's life. 
But these minuter differences count for nothing in com- 
parison with one fundamental variation, which in effect 
divided all the new systems, in spite of their superficial 
resemblance, into two, or at the most three, categories, 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 121 

In some states the popular representative body — the 
Lower House — was endowed with such powers that it 
became the real determining factor in the government 
of the nation, so that the spirit and direction of national 
policy was genuinely determined by its will, while its 
will was in its turn moulded by a real and free movement 
of public opinion. In these cases alone could it be said 
that popular government, in any full sense, had been 
established. In other countries, while the representative 
body might criticise and discuss, and might reject pro- 
posals of legislation or of taxation, it was not permitted 
to exercise any control, in form or in fact, over the 
executive. The direction of national policy in these cases 
remained effectively in the hands of a ruling house, or a 
governing class, which, instead of being controlled by 
public opinion, could aspire to direct the movement of 
public opinion along channels convenient to its own 
aims. In these cases, though government might find it 
necessary to consult and to cultivate the representative 
body, as a means of feeling the nation's pulse and seeing 
how far it dare go, it cannot be said that national self- 
government was genuinely established. To these two 
outstanding types we may perhaps add a third, repre- 
sented by countries where the legal power of control was 
formally lodged with the representative body, but where, 
for one reason or another, and generally because of the 
absence of unity of sentiment or of political intelligence 
in the mass of the electorate, the representative body 
itself became the creature of a clique or a sect, a race or 
a person. The three types shade into one another, and 
the cynical observer can always trace the defects of the 
third type in the other two. But it is useful to dis- 
tinguish them, as a means of broad classification. 



122 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

Of the first type the supreme example was Britain, 
where, whatever the dissatisfied critic of British politics 
might say, there did exist the most complete freedom 
of discussion, so that public opinion, an ever-varying 
quantity, was genuinely the outcome of the free fermenta- 
tion of the national mind ; and where, more important, 
it was impossible that the main direction of national 
policy should be in direct conflict with this freely formed 
national will arising out of unceasing discussion. The 
other examples of this type in 1878 (apart from the United 
States and the British self-governing colonies) were 
France, Italy, Belgium, and Holland. Of the second 
type the supreme example was Germany. In 1878 the 
Scandinavian countries also approximated to this type ; 
but the authority of the Kings of Sweden and Denmark 
was never so independent as that of the German Emperor, 
principally because they lacked his exclusive control over 
the army and the bureaucracy. Of the third type, the 
Austrian Empire formed perhaps the best example, since 
here a parliamentary system was actually turned into 
the means of imposing upon a majority the detested will 
of a minority. In different ways Spain and most of the 
Balkan states fell into the same category. These have 
been the instances in which the parliamentary system 
has had the most unhappy results, but their evils were 
not yet perceptible in 1878. 

These distinctions are so important that it will be 
worth while to examine with some closeness the develop- 
ment and working of these contrasted systems in typical 
cases drawn from among the leading states ; and as in 
nearly all cases the systems set up in this period have 
continued in full force until to-day, we shall in fact 
be describing the main existing systems of government. 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 123 

We shall choose Germany, Austria, France, and Britain ; 
and it will be convenient to deal with them in that order* 

Geemany 

Slight and ineffective as were the powers allowed to 
the Prussian Parliament by the constitution of 1850, 
there was one among them which was Capable of being 
used as a lever for the establishment of parliamentary 
supremacy. Although Parliament could not, as in 
Britain, withhold all supplies and thus make a govern- 
ment of which it disapproved impotent, its approval 
was required for new taxes ; and in an age of steadily 
increasing public expenditure, this power, boldly used, 
might ultimately have won supremacy for Parliament. 
In the 'fifties and 'sixties the Liberal movement was still 
strong in Prussia ; the elections always returned a Liberal 
majority. As soon as a favourable opportunity pre- 
sented itself, the Liberal majority in the Prussian Landtag 
was ready to make full use of it. This determination 
brought on a fierce struggle, which lasted from 1859 to 
1866. It was very keenly fought, and very nearly gave 
a crushing victory to the Liberal cause. If it had done 
so, the whole subsequent history of Geimany and of 
Europe would have been different. But the Liberals 
were disastrously defeated, and their defeat established 
impregnably the ascendancy of the Prussian monarchy 
and its supporters. 

In the year 1859, under the influence of the Franco- 
Austrian War in Italy, the Regent William of Prussia 
(afterwards the King and Emperor William i.) carried 
out, with the advice of his War Minister, von Roon, a 
far-reaching reorganisation and enlargement of the 
Prussian army : it was this reform scheme which enabled 



124 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

Prussia to win her victories over Austria and France. 
But the scheme involved a large additional expenditure, 
for which the approval of the Landtag was asked. The 
Liberal majority in the Landtag, holding that Prussia 
was not threatened by any other power, and not sharing 
the belief of the Prussian ruling classes in the doctrines of 
brute force, saw no reason for a great and costly addition 
to the army. It therefore voted the requisite funds 
only provisionally, for a single year. The representatives 
of the Crown vainly urged that the organisation of the 
army was exclusively a question for the king to decide, 
and that the Landtag had no right to interfere : the 
Landtag's reply was that no money for an increased 
army should be forthcoming after 1859. The government 
levied the necessary taxes in defiance of the Landtag, 
and dissolved the refractory assembly. The electors re- 
turned an increased majority, which declined as firmly 
as ever to sanction the new taxes. A second dissolution 
and a second election brought back a still more sweeping 
Liberal majority, despite all that the bureaucrats could 
do to influence the polls, and the government proposals 
were actually thrown out by a majority of eight to one. 
When such a result was obtained in a house elected on 
the three-class system, there can be no doubt that the 
vast majority of the Prussian people were resolved to 
resist the extension of military power, and to assert the 
supremacy of the representative body. William i. (who 
had now succeeded to the throne) thought the situation 
so serious that he had almost decided to abdicate. If he 
had done so, or if he had given way, Prussia might have 
ceased to be a militarist state. 

As a last resort, the king called to power in 1862 the 
most fearless, ruthless, and unbending of Prussian 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 125 

Junkers, Otto von Bismarck. Realising that Prussianism 
and the Hohenzollern autocracy were fighting for life, 
Bismarck defied the Landtag and all its electoral sup- 
porters. He told the angry Liberals that it was not for 
them to express an opinion on the requisite size and 
organisation of the army, and that when the king, whose 
sole prerogative it was, had decided that an increase was 
necessary, the Landtag was exceeding its power if it 
refused to find the money. As it still refused, and went 
on refusing for four more years, he simply collected the 
necessary taxes on the authority of the Upper House 
alone. He was able to do so, because he was master of 
the bureaucracy and of the army. In Britain a citizen 
compelled to pay an illegal tax can sue the tax-collectors 
in the law courts, and will certainly obtain a favourable 
decision. No such remedy was open to the Prussian 
subject. For four years Bismarck continued to flout and 
defy the Landtag and the vast body of public opinion 
which supported it, not only in Prussia but throughout 
Germany and Europe ; and, by doing so, showed that the 
parliamentary system afforded no real restriction upon 
the Hohenzollern despotism. For if even the control 
over new taxation could be thus disregarded with im- 
punity, what was the value of any of the other still more 
shadowy powers defined by the constitution of 1850 ? 
Newspapers assailed this tyrannous overriding of the 
law ; they were suppressed by force. Electors sent up 
petitions in support of their representatives ; they were 
prosecuted before administrative courts, and smartly 
fined. 

Meanwhile Bismarck was pursuing with ruthless daring 
a foreign policy whose obvious aim was to bring about 
a war with Austria ; and every step in this policy was 



126 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

detestable in the eyes of most Prussians and of all non- 
Prussian Germans. The Landtag protested. They were 
told that foreign policy was no concern of theirs. They 
thundered in favour of peace, and friendship with Austria, 
and the rights of Schleswig and Holstein. They were 
told that they were sentimental windbags, and that the 
greatness of Prussia and of Germany was not to be 
attained by resolutions and parliamentary discussions, 
but in the good old Prussian way, ' by blood and iron.' 
The antithesis between the historic methods of the 
Prussian monarchy and the ideals of nineteenth-century 
civilisation could not be more clearly expressed than 
they were in this long debate. 

But Bismarck was unaffected by debates or by the 
condemnation of public opinion. By means which re- 
volted the mind and conscience of all Germany, he was 
preparing an opportunity for carving out new territories 
for Prussia by the use of the army which had been 
created in defiance of the popular will. He made friends 
with Russia by helping her to suppress the Polish rebels 
of 1863, with whom all Germany sympathised. He im- 
posed the Prussian yoke on Schleswig and Holstein, in 
defiance of the desires of the people of the duchies, and 
the sentiment of all Europe, and the provisions of the 
Treaty of 1852 to which Prussia had been a party. 
Out of the Schleswig-Holstein question he manufactured 
a pretext for war with Austria. The bulk of Prussian 
opinion was against him, but the manhood of Prussia 
was under the iron discipline of the army, and had to 
serve as his instrument. Non-Prussian Germany was 
against him, and nearly all the states took arms on the 
side of Austria. But the weapon which the king and 
von Roon had forged was now ready for use, and it was 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 127 

irresistible. Austria was crushed in six weeks. The 
kingdom of Hanover and the electorate of Hesse, whose 
only offence was that they had obeyed the order of the 
Germanic Diet and the will of the whole German nation 
in taking up arms against the tyrant power, were over- 
run and declared annexed to Prussia. The free city of 
Frankfort, the ancient capital of the Germanic Confedera- 
tion, was occupied by Prussian forces, and treated as 
Brussels was treated in 1914 ; its senators were im- 
prisoned as hostages, and a huge war contribution was 
exacted under the threat that the city would be burnt 
down. 

Never was so complete, so dramatic, or so villainous a 
triumph. The ancient methods of Prussia, the methods 
of force and fraud, were justified by success. Prussia 
and Germany gasped — and gave up their dreams of 
liberty. For if these dazzling triumphs were to be won 
by disregarding the shibboleths of parliamentarism, what 
good Prussian, or what German nationalist, could any 
longer respect the old Liberal formulae ? The parlia- 
mentary opposition subsided like a pricked bladder. 
With his tongue in his cheek, Bismarck accepted an 
indemnification for his unconstitutional action. He had 
won his victory. Self-government in Prussia remained 
a sham ; and the old forces which had carved out the 
greatness of Prussia in the past by force and fraud were 
enthroned again, to carve out the new greatness of united 
Germany by the same means. By paying a mere lip- 
service to it, Prussianism had conquered, transformed, 
and enslaved Liberalism. In an amazing way the empty 
forms of self-government continued to cajole and deceive 
not only the Germans themselves, but the rest of the 
world ; but under the cover of these forms, a wolf in 



128 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

sheep's clothing, Prussianism stood as the supreme and 
triumphant enemy of everything that is implied in the 
ideals of self-government, as of all that is best in the 
ideals of nationalism and internationalism. 

Bismarck's final triumph, the imposition of the bureau- 
cratic and military domination of the Hohenzollerns 
upon the whole German nation, followed from this initial 
victory. The simple and ingenious constitutional de- 
vices whereby this was achieved were first worked out in 
the constitution of the North German Confederation in 
1867, and perfected in the constitution of the German 
Empire in 1871, which has since remained unchanged. 
Germany found herself equipped with a representative 
assembly, or Reichstag, elected by universal suffrage ; 
for, having learned how easily parliamentary opposition 
could be stultified if the executive power was given 
sufficient independence, Bismarck was clever enough not 
to irritate public opinion by any such tricky device as 
that of the three classes in the Prussian franchise. Thus 
a highly democratic system seemed to be the gift of the 
conqueror to united Germany, and the Liberals were 
cajoled into thinking that their cause had triumphed. 

But alongside of the Reichstag was set the Bundesrat, 
or Federal Council, consisting of a small number of repre- 
sentatives of the various states in the Empire ; and on 
the plea that it was the guardian of state-rights and of 
the federal system, it was given far more extensive powers 
than the Reichstag. Its members were not elected, but 
were the nominees of the various state governments. 
They possessed as individuals no independent rights of 
deliberation, but were required to vote, like ambassadors 
at a Congress, strictly according to the instructions of 
the governments which appointed them. Prussia did 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 129 

not even obtain a majority of the votes, though she 
possessed a majority of the population of the empire, 
and this had an air of remarkable moderation. Having 
only seventeen of the fifty-one members, she required to 
secure ten additional votes to get her own way. But the 
preponderant influence of the Emperor over the minor 
princes of the empire could be trusted always to ensure 
that a sufficient margin of votes would be ' instructed ' 
according to his desires. Hence, in fact though not in 
form, the Emperor was put into the position of being 
able to dictate the decisions of the Bundesrat beforehand ; 
and that body, whose function was, in theory, to repre- 
sent and protect the independence of the minor states, 
became, in fact, the chief means of imposing the will of 
Prussia upon them. The Bundesrat deliberates in secret, 
and its president is the Chancellor, the head of the 
imperial executive, a nominee of the Emperor. It has 
a number of standing committees. There is a Prussian 
majority on every committee but one. The exception 
is the Foreign Relations Committee, which has no 
Prussian members ; but this is because, under the con- 
stitution, foreign relations fall under the exclusive control 
of the Emperor, so that the Committee is a merely formal 
body, which seldom meets. 

To a body such as the Bundesrat it was safe to allow 
a considerable degree of nominal power, because there 
was no fear that it would be independently used ; the 
Bundesrat has proved to be, in fact, little more than a 
means of registering the decrees of the Prussian masters 
of Germany, and of checking the activity of the Reichstag. 
The Reichstag in its turn has never been much more 
than a pretentious debating society. Its consent was 
required for new laws and new taxes, as was that of the 

I 



130 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

Prussian Landtag under the constitution of 1850, but 
these powers have proved to be as unreal in the one case 
as in the other. In practice it has been limited to the 
discussion of the legislative and financial proposals of 
the government, and at the most it sometimes succeeds 
in modifying or amending them ; but as it has been 
from the first divided into many parties, the government 
has nearly always succeeded in getting its own way by 
a judicious distribution of favours. Over the executive 
government the Reichstag has had no control whatever. 
All ministers and members of the imperial service were, 
and are, appointed by the Crown alone, and though they 
were empowered to attend the Reichstag, they were not 
members of it or responsible to it. Over the general 
direction and aims of national policy the representative 
body of the German Empire obtained no power at all ; 
it was from the first little more than a veil drawn over 
the Hohenzollern dictatorship of Germany. 

This dictatorship depended, as always, upon the control 
of the army and the bureaucracy ; and the means by 
which Bismarck extended this control from Prussia to 
the whole of Germany are worth noting. So far as con- 
cerns the army, they were quite simple and direct. The 
imperial constitution provided that the King of Prussia, 
as hereditary Emperor, should be sole master and com- 
mander of the armies of the empire ; the Prussian system 
was extended to all the other states, and their forces 
passed under the Emperor's direct control : he was the 
'supreme War Lord.' The three kingdoms of Bavaria, 
Saxony, and Wurtemburg were indeed permitted to re- 
tain for some purposes a nominally distinct organisa- 
tion ; but their system was to be identical, the Emperor 
was given inspecting powers in time of peace, and as 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 131 

soon as war began his command became unqualified : 
the chief relic of independence then surviving would 
be the issue of separate casualty lists. This absolute 
mastery over the whole military force of Germany (which 
means the whole of German manhood), and the power 
of declaring war and peace which goes with it, formed 
the core of the Hohenzollern dominion, and rendered the 
achievement of any substantial change in the system 
extremely difficult. 

How the Emperor himself regards his position the 
present Emperor has made very plain : a few of his 
phrases form, in fact, an excellent summary of the 
essence of the modern German system. ' The one pillar 
on which the empire rests is the army.' ' It is my busi- 
ness alone to declare if there shall be war.' ' The more I 
get behind party cries, the more firmly and surely do I 
count on my army.' ' The soldier has not to have a will 
of his own ; you must all indeed have one will, but that 
is my will ; there is only one law, and that is my law.' 
Here is, in truth, the root fact of the German system. 
Fundamentally, under all its disguises, it was a military 
autocracy which the constitution of 1871 established. 
And the men who worked this tremendous military engine 
were mainly the old Junker class of Prussia. They 
gradually and easily assimilated the members of the 
corresponding classes in the other German states, but all 
the important commands were kept in Prussian hands. 
Military supremacy belonged not only to an autocratic 
sovereign, but was wielded on his behalf by a rigid 
caste, inspired by a long tradition of ascendancy and of 
the extension of power by brute force. 

The method by which the control of Prussia was ex- 
tended over the bureaucracy of the other German states 



132 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

was more subtle, but in the long run not less effective, 
than that by which she obtained control over their 
armies. Bismarck did not attempt to create a great 
imperial bureaucratic system under centralised control, 
because this would have aroused the jealousy of the 
minor states. He preferred to maintain only a small 
imperial staff of officials under the direction of the Im- 
perial Chancellor, and to entrust the execution of im- 
perial laws to the local bureaucracies of the various 
states. This appeared to be a concession to local inde- 
pendence. But the result was that, as the executants 
of imperial laws, the Bavarian and Saxon bureaucrats 
found themselves subjected to the supervision and the 
increasingly close control of the central officials, who 
were practically all Prussians. The bureaucracy through- 
out Germany was by this means steadily Prussianised, 
and its members became in fact quite as much the agents 
of the King of Prussia as of their local princes. 

Thus, as in 1850, so in 1871, the adoption of consti- 
tutional forms, under Bismarck's clever direction, proved 
to be not a source of weakness but a source of increased 
strength to the old governing factors of Prussia. It did 
not dethrone them, or subject them to any effective 
limitation ; it gave them the appearance of being genuine 
organs of the national will. And so what appeared on 
the surface as the triumph of the principles of self-govern- 
ment in the state in which, beyond all others, this triumph 
seemed most improbable, was in reality the gravest defeat 
which the cause of self-government had yet suffered. 

Austria-Hungary 

The political history of the Austro -Hungarian Empire 
since the beginning of the constitutional regime in I860 



^THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 133 

has been extremely complex and bewildering, but certain 
broad conclusions emerge from a survey of it. In the 
first place, parliamentary government was ineffective 
from the beginning, especially in the Austrian half of 
the empire. The chief cause of this ineffectiveness was 
the bitter strife which raged, and still rages, between 
the numerous and mutually hostile nationalities of which 
the empire is composed. On a small scale we have in 
Britain experienced something of this difficulty, and there 
have been moments when the specifically nationalist aims 
of the Irish party, and in a less degree the nationalist 
bias of Scottish and Welsh groups, have seemed to 
threaten the breakdown of the parliamentary machine. 
But the extraordinary medley of conflicting peoples who 
make up the Austro -Hungarian Empire, and their virulent 
antipathies, present a problem to which neither Britain 
nor indeed any other European state affords any analogy. 
And the most cursory study of the politics of that empire 
illustrates more cogently and more clearly than perhaps 
any other body of political facts the truth of the conten- 
tion upon which we have so often insisted, that a parlia- 
mentary system can only work efficiently in a state which 
is unified by a prevailing and deeply rooted national 
sentiment. Where this does not exist, either the parlia- 
mentary system becomes merely a mechanism for the 
enforcement of the supremacy of one nationality over 
its fellows, or the old organs of government, the monarchy, 
the bureaucracy, and the army, are enabled to maintain 
their effective control over the general direction of the 
policy of the State. In various degrees both of these 
results happened in the Austrian Empire ; and in this 
case the adoption of a representative system did not 
bring liberty, mutual sympathy, and the supremacy of 



134 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

the public will, but chaos, racial tyranny, and the survival 
of the old dynastic control of the resources of the State 
for dynastic ends. 

When, after the defeats of 1859 and 1866, the Habsburg 
monarchy, hitherto the most obstinate defender of abso- 
lutism, found itself compelled to yield to the clamour for 
the institutions of self-government, there was one system 
which might have brought peace, and taught the con- 
flicting nationalities to co-operate for the common advan- 
tage. This might have been the result of a federal system, 
allowing a high degree of autonomy to the various nation- 
alities, while a common military system, a common tariff 
and a common foreign policy were maintained under 
co-operative control. But such a solution was incon- 
sistent with the traditions and aims of the two ruling 
races, the German- Austrians and the Magyars. 

Accordingly, the Compromise of 1867 divided the 
empire into two distinct and independent States, one for 
each of the two ruling races. Each State had its own 
Parliament, its own responsible ministry, and its separate 
finance, and they were linked together only by a ruling 
dynasty, and by an agreement (subject to revision from 
time to time) for common action in the three spheres of 
foreign affairs, defence, and the provision of the funds 
necessary for these purposes. The control of these 
common affairs, and of the ministries which dealt with 
them, was entrusted to ' delegations ' of sixty members 
each from the two Parliaments ; but in order to empha- 
sise the separation of the two realms, these ' delegations ' 
were to meet separately, and to communicate with one 
another only in writing. If, therefore, we would under- 
stand the real nature of the system established in Austria- 
Hungary in 1867, it is necessary to consider each of the 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 135 

two States separately, and also their common action. 
And as, in all its main features, the system has remained 
unchanged from that day to this, our analysis may well 
be made to refer to the whole period since 1867. 

In Hungary the Parliament was elected on a nominally 
wide suffrage by the direct votes of the electors in all the 
districts of the country, Croat, Slovak, and Rumanian as 
well as Magyar. But although the Magyars formed 
much less than one-half of the population, they have 
always possessed an overwhelming majority in the elected 
house, and this for two main reasons. In the first place, 
the electors were required to be able to speak Magyar, 
and many of them were unable, and sometimes from 
patriotic motives refused, to use the language of the 
dominant race. In the second place, all the leading 
officials who controlled the elections were Magyars, and 
they never hesitated deliberately to falsify the returns, 
sometimes going so far as forcibly to exclude Slovak or 
other voters from the polling booths : there is probably 
no country in which interference with elections has been 
carried on so unblushingly as in Hungary. 1 Accordingly, 
the Hungarian Parliament did not represent, and was 
not intended to represent, the peoples of Hungary ; it 
represented practically only the dominant race, and all 
its powers were used continuously and openly for the 
purpose of securing the racial ascendancy of the Magyars, 
and forcing the non-Magyar peoples into a Magyar mould. 
There were many parties in the Hungarian Parliament, 
and some of them called themselves Liberal. They have 
differed on economic questions, on religious questions, 
and, above all, in the degree of jealousy with which they 

1 See Mr. Seton-Watson's books, especially Electoral Corruption in 
Hungary. 



136 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

regarded the connection with Austria. But they have 
all agreed in pursuing the policy of racial dominance, in 
refusing to recognise any language but their own, in 
reserving to themselves all important public offices, in 
forcing the schools to teach Magyar, in punishing ' dis- 
loyal ' provinces like Croatia by depriving them, for 
example, of railway facilities. It would be difficult to 
find in the annals of despotism a more unresting and 
systematic tyranny than that which has been imposed by 
the Magyar majority in the Hungarian Parliament upon 
the great majority of the inhabitants of the country 
which that Parliament is supposed to represent. It was 
perhaps natural that a vigorous race with proud tradi- 
tions, finding itself in danger of being swamped by other 
races whom it regarded as its inferiors, should use all 
means, legitimate or illegitimate, to maintain its supre- 
macy. But comprehensible though it may be, the rule 
of a racial minority constitutes a worse form of tyranny 
than the rule of an autocratic prince. Moreover, it 
aroused a steadily intensifying bitterness. So long as the 
Magyars and the Slavs of Hungary were the common 
subjects of an alien despotism, it seemed not impossible 
that they might learn to live together in amity. The 
parliamentary system, worked in the interests of a single 
racial group, has produced among them an irreconcilable 
antipathy, and has made it appear that peace and justice 
can never be established among these peoples until the 
Hungarian State is broken up into its component elements. 
The Hungarian Parliament exercises a real control over the 
government of the country, and the ministers have always 
been drawn from the party or group of parties forming a 
majority. But, in spite of that, the parliamentary system 
in Hungary has not meant liberty, but tyranny. 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 137 

In the Austrian half of the monarchy the conditions 
have been different, but not much more happy. Here, 
until 1906, the Reichsrat or Parliament was not elected 
directly by the voters, but by the Diets or local assemblies 
of the seventeen provinces ; and as these in some degree 
represent distinct nationalities (Czechs in Bohemia, Poles 
in Galicia, Slovenes in Carinthia), it followed that the 
subordinate nationalities were from the first better repre- 
sented in the Austrian than in the Hungarian Parliament. 
But the provincial Diets themselves were not democra- 
tically elected. They were chosen by defined classes — 
landowners, townspeople, and peasants ; and the system 
was carefully arranged so as to give a disproportionate 
weight to those classes, and to those districts in the non- 
German regions, in which the German element was 
strongest. Consequently, though the Germans were 
greatly outnumbered in Austria as a whole, they 
were generally able to command a majority in the 
Reichsrat. From this arose much bitterness and long 
strife, especially between the Germans and the Czechs of 
Bohemia ; and the Germans for a time maintained their 
ascendancy only by an alliance with the Poles of Galicia, 
to whom they granted a large degree of local autonomy, 
as the price of their support. The Germans themselves 
and, in a less degree, the other nationalities also, were 
further divided into numerous parties ; it is possible to 
enumerate between twenty and thirty organised parties 
in the Austrian Reichsrat. 

This chaos of parties had two striking results. In the 
first place, it practically left in the hands of the Crown the 
choice of ministers. According to the constitution, the 
ministers were to be responsible to Parliament. But 
they have not been, and could not be, selected from the 



138 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

majority in Parliament, because none of the numerous 
parties ever had a majority. Hence the responsibility 
of ministers has been an unreality. In actual fact, 
the Crown has been able to select its own ministers, 
choosing them first from one group and then from 
another ; and the chosen ministers could proceed to 
make a majority by bargaining with the various groups. 
When a ministry became unpopular, it could be dismissed 
and displaced by another drawn from some other group. 
The defeated ministry got the discredit of its failure ; 
but the Crown was nearly always able to secure what it 
desired from one group or another, as the price of office. 
Thus, despite the theory of ministerial responsibility, the 
ministers were far more fully the agents of the Crown 
than of Parliament, and under the semblance of parlia- 
mentary supremacy the dynasty continued to be the 
one stable and unchanging factor in Austrian politics, 
pursuing steadily its purely dynastic policy. Here is one 
of the most striking demonstrations of the fact that the 
existence of a multitude of parties renders extremely 
difficult the establishment of an effective parliamentary 
control of government. 

The second result of this parliamentary chaos was that 
in the actual business of daily administration the bureau- 
cratic service, which was and is predominantly German, 
continued to enjoy a very high degree of independence 
and freedom of action. Older than Parliament, and 
working among a population which had for centuries 
been habituated to its authority, the bureaucracy re- 
garded itself, under the system of 1867 as under the 
earlier despotism, as the servant not of the people but of 
the Crown ; nor has it ever been reduced to any real 
subordination to the parliamentary system. 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 139 

Thus while in Hungary the racial ascendancy of a 
minority expressed itself through parliamentary forms, 
in Austria the political chaos which resulted from national 
disunity enabled the dynasty, by the exercise of patience 
and subtlety in playing off the races one against another, 
to retain most of its old ascendancy, and in particular 
to preserve control over the bureaucratic service. In 
neither half of the Dual Monarchy has the government 
been carried on in accord with the opinions and desires 
of the community as a whole ; because the community 
as a whole, being deeply disunited, could have no clearly 
denned or predominant body of opinion or desires ; and 
in the midst of its discordant wranglings, the spoils of 
real power were carried off partly by the monarchy, 
partly by the Magyars. 

This result exhibited itself equally in the direction of 
the common affairs of the two States. Here, indeed, the 
influence of the dynasty was greater than elsewhere, 
because the dynasty was the only visible bond holding 
together two States which had few interests in common. 
By one of the fundamental provisions of the Ausgleich 
of 1867, the joint army of Austria and Hungary was 
placed under the sole and undivided command of the 
Emperor-King. This military dictatorship was indeed 
the main force which held this strange political structure 
together ; and that is the significance of the saying that 
' Austria-Hungary is not a State, but only a dynasty and 
an army.' Foreign policy also in a special degree re- 
mained under the influence of the monarchy. It was but 
a feeble and wavering control over these vitally important 
powers that could be exercised by the delegations from 
the two Parliaments ; and the mere fact that the two 
delegations did not form a single body, but arrived at 



140 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

separate decisions and could only discuss their differences 
in writing, threw all the more power into the hands of 
the one permanent and stable element in the system, 
the Crown. 

From the first, however, there was a marked contrast 
between the two delegations. The Austrian delegation 
represented several different races and provinces, who 
were generally at cross-purposes. The Hungarian delega- 
tion was a compact body, guided by the clearly defined 
and dominant purpose of the Magyars. Their aim was 
racial ascendancy. But this aim had a very direct 
bearing upon foreign affairs. It was, and is, the supreme 
interest of the Magyars that their subjects, Rumans, 
Croats, and Serbs, should not be stimulated to independ- 
ence by the influence of independent states of their own 
blood beyond the border of the monarchy. The Magyar 
was the sworn foe of the Slav, because he lived in constant 
fear of his own Slav subjects ; and his chief interest in 
foreign affairs was to secure, if possible, the weakening 
of the independent Slav states outside the monarchy. 
This made the Magyars ready to join in the most daring 
adventures, such as the annexation of Bosnia in 1908, 
the successive threats to Serbia, and finally the desperate 
throw of the present war. But this Magyar point of 
view was in entire accord with the traditional desire of 
the Habsburg monarchy to expand southwards at the 
expense of Serbia towards Salonika, and with its ancient 
jealousy of Russia. There could be no such clear fixity 
of purpose among the mixed peoples who were repre- 
sented in the Austrian delegation ; and for that reason 
the Magyars exercised an increasing influence in foreign 
affairs, and the Emperor tended more and more to throw 
himself into their hands, to select his foreign ministers 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 141 

from among them, and even, as it seemed, to submit to 
their dictation. Certainly it was the Magyar point of 
view which most deeply influenced the foreign policy of 
the Dual Monarchy, and allowed it to become the tool 
of German ambitions ; though this policy also had the 
support of most of the German- Austrians. There cannot 
be a shadow of doubt that if the will and desires of the 
great majority among the peoples of the monarchy had 
exercised any weight at all in the direction of its policy, 
the foreign policy of the monarchy, during the whole of 
the period since 1867, but especially during the years 
since 1890, would have been governed by quite different 
ideas and principles. And if this is true, then, despite 
the elaborate paraphernalia of representative institutions 
established in 1867, the people of the Austro-Hungarian 
Empire were not, in the most vital matters, endowed 
with the right of self-government ; and this empire may 
be regarded as providing the clearest example of the way 
in which parliamentary institutions may be distorted to 
serve special interests and private ends. 

France 

While in Germany and Austria the forms of represen- 
tative government were being turned into the implements 
of forces which did not represent the public will, in 
France, as a result of the Franco-Prussian War and the 
political revolution which it caused, a fully representative 
system, effectively under the control of the nation, was 
for the first time being established. 

The empire of Napoleon m., although it rested upon a 
democratic basis, and was supported by occasional appeals 
to the popular vote, gave to the nation, in fact, no control 
whatsoever over the organs of government. There were, 



142 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

indeed, bodies called the Senate and the Legislative Body, 
but they enjoyed no real power. The Senate was nomi- 
nated by the Emperor. The Legislative Body, which was 
popularly elected, was not permitted to initiate laws, 
but only to discuss them ; its assent was necessary for 
the annual budget, but it had to pass or reject each 
section of it as a whole, and as total rejection was im- 
possible, this meant that it had no control over finance ; 
over the executive it had no shadow of control. Finally, 
its debates were not allowed to be published, except in 
an official summary prepared by government, so that it 
could not influence the nation. The elections were con- 
trolled by government ; there were official candidates in 
every constituency, whose expenses were paid by the 
State, and all election meetings were forbidden. Govern- 
ment formed and revised the electoral districts at its 
own pleasure, and the returning officers, who were govern- 
ment officials, took the ballot-boxes home with them 
during the polling ! At the same time the Press was 
very strictly controlled ; any newspaper might be 
' warned ' or suppressed by government without any 
possibility of appeal, and the censorship of theatres for- 
bade even the most remote political allusion. To all this 
was added an elaborate system of police espionage, such 
that any person was liable to be arrested as a suspect 
if he was heard to express dangerous political opinions. 
Under this system — which was supported and confirmed 
by universal suffrage — political life practically died out 
between the time of Napoleon's coup d'etat in 1851 and 
1860. Yet even under this hideous denial of liberty the 
free spirit of France made itself heard. Brave men con- 
trived, in spite of all obstacles, to get themselves elected 
to the Legislative Body, and discussed in its sessions the 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 143 

problems of government as openly as they dared. And 
meanwhile the revolutionary spirit, always endemic in 
France, was driven underground, tempted to adopt more 
and more extreme ideas, and to prepare a resort to mere 
violence and destruction. 

During the last ten years of his reign (1860-70), 
Napoleon ni. was driven, by the non-success of his foreign 
policy, and especially by the alienation of the Church, on 
whose support he largely rested, to make gradual con- 
cessions to the liberal idea. He reduced the restrictions 
on the Press, and permitted greater freedom of discussion 
in the Legislative Body. In 1868 he allowed political 
meetings to be held, provided that a government repre- 
sentative, empowered to stop the proceedings, was always 
present. In 1869 new elections created a powerful 
opposition in the Legislative Body ; and after a good 
deal of hesitation Napoleon decided to choose a ministry 
from among the leaders of the strongest party, whose 
aim was to turn the empire into a parliamentary monarchy 
of the British type. At the beginning of 1870 it seemed 
that the persistence of French Liberalism had at last 
won its victory, and that the French people had at last 
begun to regain the power of controlling, through their 
representatives, the conduct and policy of government. 

But at this unhappy moment came the disaster of the 
Franco-Prussian War. Before the end of 1870 Paris was 
besieged ; German armies occupied the whole of Northern 
France ; the empire with all its institutions was swept 
away by the unanimous will of the people whom it had 
ruined ; and the unhappy nation, in the midst of its 
agony, had to improvise a government to negotiate with 
the victorious enemy. For this purpose a single-chamber 
assembly was elected — elected while half of the country 



144 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

was actually occupied by the enemy ; and upon this 
body fell the task not only of deciding the terms of peace, 
but of making a new system of government. Chosen 
by universal suffrage at a time of deep depression and 
disillusionment, the Assembly consisted inevitably, for the 
most part, of men who had little political experience : 
and it was divided into a number of parties, among whom 
were included adherents of all the various monarchical 
regimes through which France had passed during the 
century. The monarchists of various schools commanded 
a majority, and at first it seemed almost certain that the 
old historic Bourbon monarchy would be restored, though 
under great constitutional restrictions. Only the austere 
impracticability of the exiled head of the old ruling house, 
indeed, prevented his restoration ; and the unwillingness 
of his partisans to abandon all hope led to long delays : 
for this reason the Assembly prolonged its existence for 
more than five years. In the end, the settlement, when 
it came, had to be in some degree a compromise. 

The constitution of the Third Republic, as it was drawn 
up in 1875, was not defined in a single logical document 
such as each of the earlier revolutions had produced ; it 
was embodied in a series of piecemeal measures. But this 
element of compromise, this absence of finality and rigidity, 
though it caused at the time much irritation to the logical 
French mind, was, in the long run, a source of strength 
rather than of weakness. It meant that the system was 
shaped gradually, and retained a certain elasticity, so that 
it could change and grow as the mind of the nation changed 
and grew. And that, perhaps, is part of the reason why 
it has lasted so much longer than any French system 
since 1789, and has, on the whole, in spite of all the 
difficulties it has had to face, in spite of the cruel circum- 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 145 

stances in which it arose, in spite of the unceasing 
criticisms which have been directed against it, become 
an accepted part of the nation's life, as none of its pre- 
decessors ever succeeded in becoming. 

As if the troubles of France were not already great 
enough, the labours of the Assembly were disturbed 
almost at the outset by the aimless and reckless outburst 
of mere revolutionary insanity which is known as the 
Paris Commune. This rising was the product of the 
revolutionary spirit which modern French history had 
nurtured, and which the exaggerated repression of 
Napoleon m. had intensified : it was born of the belief 
that mob violence could somehow achieve vague, won- 
derful results, and of the reckless misery due to the siege. 
No definite principles inspired it. The nearest approach 
to an idea displayed by its leaders was contained in the 
demand that every commune (there are 40,000 com- 
munes in France) should have ' absolute communal 
autonomy,' J and the unity of France was, in some un- 
defined way, to be assured by the co-operation of those 
communes which ' adhered to the contract.' What 
communal autonomy meant the Communists showed in 
Paris itself, where they disarmed and terrorised the vast 
majority who disapproved of their proceedings. The 
Commune had to be overthrown by bloody street-fighting ; 
and it is not surprising that the government dealt very 
severely with these madmen who were tearing France 
asunder, for no reason capable of definition or defence, 
at a time when she was suffering from the agony of alien 
conquest. More than 7000 were killed ; 13,000 were 

1 This folly was reproduced at Cronstadt during the Russian revolu- 
tion of 1917, which, indeed, presents many instructive parallels to the 
French movements of 1848 and 1871. 



146 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

sentenced to transportation or other severe penalties. 
And it was with the record of this horrible episode that 
the history of the free Republic began. No system of 
government has ever started under less hopeful auspices, 
or amid greater difficulties, than the new system of the 
defeated and disheartened French nation. 

Yet the Third Republic, born in such gloom, has in 
fact given to France what had been given to her by none 
of her earlier experiments — freedom, and a machinery of 
self-government so complete that the nation was hence- 
forth fully able to shape its own destinies. 

The new sovereign body consisted of a Parliament of 
two Hoifses. The Upper House, or Senate, was elected 
by all persons chosen by the people to serve in a repre- 
sentative capacity, whether in central or in local govern- 
ment ; and at first it included also a number of life 
members, who were later allowed gradually to disappear. 
The Lower House, or Chamber, was directly elected by 
universal suffrage. The two Houses sitting together under 
the name of the Assembly formed the sovereign ruling 
body of France ; the Assembly alone could alter the 
fundamental articles of the constitution ; the Assembly 
also was to elect the President of the Republic. Thus 
the American precedent of direct election of the President 
by popular vote, which France had reproduced with 
disastrous results in 1848, was abandoned ; and the 
President was made to feel that he was dependent upon 
the elected Houses. Moreover, the President's powers 
were carefully limited, so as to guard against any repeti- 
tion of Napoleon's coup d'etat. His functions were closely 
modelled upon those of the king in Britain, with this 
difference, that they were defined by law, not regulated 
by custom. He must always act through ministers ; and 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 14? 

the body of ministers must form a coherent Cabinet, 
jointly responsible to the Chambers. This meant that 
in the new French system Parliament was to have as 
full a mastery over the whole conduct of government as 
it possessed in the British system. Custom has prescribed 
that, as in the British system, it is the Lower House alone 
which makes and unmakes ministries. Broadly speaking, 
the new French system was modelled on the British 
system as closely as it was possible for a system deliber- 
ately created to reproduce the features of a system which 
had grown up gradually, and rested mainly upon custom. 
But there was one broad difference between the two 
systems in actual practice. While the British Parliament 
and the British people were divided by long habit into 
two great parties, the French Parliament and people were 
from the first broken up into many parties, partly owing 
to the accidents of French history, partly perhaps because 
of the more logical and less compromising nature of the 
French mind. No one of these parties has ever by itself 
possessed a clear majority, and this has had certain 
effects, which must necessarily be produced in any system 
wherein this feature occurs. In the first place, the power 
of the President is increased, because it falls to him to 
choose whom he shall call upon to form a ministry ; and 
there may often be several men who might equally well 
be called upon. In the British system there is rarely 
any doubt : the leader of the party which has a majority 
in the House of Commons must be called in, even though 
he be personally distasteful to the king. If there were 
many small parties, instead of two great ones, in the 
British system, the king's personal preferences or sym- 
pathies would often count for a good deal. In the second 
place, any ministry, if it is to command a majority, must 



148 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

have the support of several groups ; and this necessitates 
a bargaining for support, which may sometimes lead to 
unhappy results : the small group which has itself no 
hope of enjoying power may be tempted to obtain favours 
in return for its votes, and the ministry may be tempted 
to pay the price required. Such bargaining is often honest 
enough ; but it is not always so, and some of the most 
unsatisfactory features of the parliamentary regime in 
France have been due to this cause. And, finally, the 
ministries thus formed, being at the mercy of combina- 
tions which may dissolve as rapidly as they are formed, 
are apt to be short-lived. They succeed one another 
with kaleidoscopic rapidity. The public mind is be- 
wildered, and often fails to follow their actions, often 
does not even know by whom it is governed. Govern- 
ment loses prestige and strength and stability. And these 
rapidly changing ministers, who flit in and out of the 
great departments of State, are often unable to exercise 
a controlling influence over their permanent officials : 
they have no sooner got a grasp of the work of their 
office than they are replaced. This brings the unhappy 
result that the control of Parliament over the bureaucracy, 
which is primarily exercised through the parliamentary 
heads of the great departments, is apt to become ineffec- 
tive. The bureaucracy of France, created by the great 
Napoleon, has remained under the Third Republic, 
almost as fully as under the systems which preceded it, 
the most stable, active, efficient, and persistent element 
in the government of the country. Although it has now 
learned to regard itself as the servant of the nation, and 
no longer (as always before) as the servant of a ruling 
prince, it is still very independent. Indeed, it is perhaps 
more independent than it used to be, since the rapidly 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 149 

changing parliamentary chiefs cannot supervise its 
activities as closely as the ministers of a despotio 
regime. 

But the political ingenuity of the French has found a 
remedy (though only a partial remedy) for this last defect, 
by setting up parliamentary committees for the chief 
departments ; and these committees receive far fuller 
information in detail about the proceedings of the depart- 
ments than is usually given to the British House of 
Commons. And this system actually draws advantage 
from the weakness and from the rapid changes of French 
ministries. Not only are the ministers unable to resist 
inquiry, as British ministries, by the use of their standing 
majorities, are often able to do ; but just because there 
are so many men who have served their turn in office, 
every French Parliament contains a larger number of 
members with official experience than any British Parlia- 
ment ; and, of course, the man with some official experi- 
ence is, ceteris paribus, likely to be a more useful member 
of such a committee than the man without it. Thus 
the French system has brought about a far more methodi- 
cal and direct control over the bureaucracj^ by the repre- 
sentative body than the British system has hitherto made 
possible. But this does not fully counterbalance the 
relative weakness of the French cabinets. 

In yet another way the bureaucratic character of French 
government was qualified by the system of 1871. It 
brought about the real beginning of self-government in 
the local sphere, by establishing in the areas of local 
administration — communes, arrondissements and de- 
partments — elected councils, and in the lowest grade 
also elected maires, to supervise and co-operate with the 
bureaucratic officials who had hitherto controlled the 



150 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

whole machinery of local government. The practice of 
local self-government, which is a habit of centuries in 
Britain, could not be established or made effective in a 
moment against the widely different traditions of France, 
and its advocates wisely avoided the wholesale experi- 
ments which had plunged the country into confusion in 
1791. The bureaucratic official, reporting to and con- 
trolled by the authorities in Paris, remained, and still 
remains, the predominant factor, as he has never been 
in Britain. But at least the co-operation of the ordinary 
citizen began to be enlisted to an extent never attempted 
since 1791, and the French people began to acquire that 
experience of the art of self-government in local affairs 
which exercises so sanative an effect upon the working 
of seli-government on the national scale. 

The system of the Third Republic has been the object 
of incessant criticism ; and in some respects its results 
have been regarded with a reasonable dissatisfaction even 
by sincere believers in democratic government. But a 
too strongly bureaucratic tradition cannot be overcome 
in a moment, and it takes time for a nation to acquire 
at once the means and the habit of constant and watchful 
criticism of its representatives. When all is said, the 
faults of the system were such as the nation itself had 
the power to amend. At the worst no French government 
could now defy the national will, and the national mind 
had obtained the means of forming a free judgment, and 
the machinery for expressing it. The nation had become 
the master of its own destinies, and this could not be said 
either of the German nation, or of the confused and 
conflicting peoples of Austria-Hungary. 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 151 

Britain 

While the great continental States were deliberately 
creating brand-new systems of democratic representative 
government, more or less genuine in character, Britain, 
the mother of the parliamentary system, quietly went 
through the great transition from middle-class rule to 
democracy, by the Reform Act of 1867, which enfranchised 
the artisan classes of the towns. But in the case of 
Britain alone, there was no sudden breach with her 
traditions, and no material alteration of her political 
machinery ; only an increase in the size of her electorate. 
Although the politicians took different views as to the 
way in which the change should be carried out, and as 
to the necessity of qualifications or safeguards, in fact the 
leaders of both of the great political parties were agreed 
on the main principle. The change was not brought 
about by any revolutionary upheaval, for although the 
railings of Hyde Park were broken by a big mass meeting 
in favour of reform, it is absurd to suppose that the 
classes in possession of power were moved by fear. They 
were moved partly by a conviction of the desirability 
of the change, partly by calculations of party advantage. 
Nor was the Act of 1867, though it may truly be said to 
have established democracy in Britain, a logical expres- 
sion of democratic theory. It was very far from estab- 
lishing universal suffrage. In truth, it simply admitted 
to ' active citizenship ' those elements in the nation which 
had shown, in their trade unions and co-operative ven- 
tures, a real capacity for the management of common 
affairs. These classes were admitted to a full share 
of control over all the organs of government, if they 
liked to use it ; just as other elements had been earlier 



152 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

admitted. And at first the change seemed to make curi- 
ously little difference. The parliamentary system worked 
just as smoothly as before. John Stuart Mill, a convinced 
Radical, writing some years before the change, had, while 
advocating a democratic franchise, been haunted by the 
fear lest the enfranchised democracy might organise a 
mere class ascendancy. His fears were wholly falsified 
by the event. The new electorate divided its allegiance 
between the existing political parties. And Walter 
Bagehot, writing some five years after the change, could 
exult in the fact that the old machinery had adapted 
itself perfectly to the new conditions. Never, even in 
British history, has a political revolution been more 
quietly effected. The orderliness, stability and practical 
efficiency which were the boast of British self-government 
appeared to be wholly unimpaired. And this contributed 
to strengthen the prestige of the British system, which 
was at its highest during this period. 

In all spheres, indeed, Britain had now attained the 
highest point of influence and prestige that she had ever 
touched in her history. She was by common consent 
the first of the great powers. Her wealth seemed inex- 
haustible, and almost all classes of her population were 
growingly prosperous. She was the world's supreme 
market, workshop, and bank. Under the guardianship 
of her fleet, the unchallenged mistress of the seas, her 
myriad ships were to be seen in all waters, and she held 
an unapproachable supremacy in world-commerce. Her 
dominions girdled the earth. She was during these years 
endowing them, without stint or back-thought, with the 
institutions of liberty which were her heritage, on a scale 
which the democrats of Europe might well envy ; while 
with a profitable liberality she threw open every port 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 153 

and market in her wide domains to the traders of all 
nations as freely as to her own. Beyond all her other 
glories was the glory of her freedom. She was the mother 
of liberty, whose institutions the rest of the world was 
humbly copying. Resting secure on the deep foundations 
of her ordered freedom, she alone had no reason to fear 
disturbance within her own borders, for all the unrest of 
the early century had gone ; she alone needed to impose 
no restrictions upon speech or writing, or to regard 
jealously the formation of associations for the advocacy 
of political or economic reconstruction ; she alone could 
offer a safe refuge for the exiles and conspirators of all 
lands — the Mazzinis and the Marxes — knowing that they 
could not undermine the loyalty of her sons. Freedom 
was her note in everything, and what wealth it seemed 
to have brought her ! To a materialist generation, avid 
of wealth, her abounding prosperity seemed to demon- 
strate that freedom paid. This was the age of the 
apotheosis of British institutions. 

Naturally the British peoples fell victims to a certain 
self-complacency regarding the greatness of their country 
and the perfection of its institutions. This was the time 
when Palmerston, that typical mid- Victorian British 
statesman, threw the mantle of British citizenship over 
the Levantine Jew, Don Pacifico, with the superbly 
insolent phrase civis Romanus sum. And to this period 
belong two political treatises, still accepted as standard 
books, which in different ways combined to sing the 
praises of the British system. There is probably no 
better way of realising the sense of finality and of satis- 
faction which during that period the British system in- 
spired than a study of Mill's Representative Government 
( 1 859) and Bagehot's English Constitution ( 1 868). Different 



154 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

as they were in their methods and in their attitudes 
of mind, these two very able writers were alike in the 
calm and almost unconscious assumption that the British 
system represented the highest achievement of human 
politics, and that no other system was seriously deserving 
of study. Mill, indeed, felt some qualms : he showed a 
sense, far ahead of his age, that the representative system 
afforded only a very rough and partial reflection of the 
national mind. But he ventured to declare — an amazing 
declaration for a philosopher — not only that it was 
possible to devise an ideal or perfect form of government, 
but that the parliamentary system was such a form ; and 
it is plain that in his judgment the British system — 
especially if it were improved by the introduction of Mr. 
Hare's fantastic scheme of proportional representation, 
which Mill advocated — almost attained to the ideal. As 
for Bagehot, his ineffable belief in the utter perfection of 
the British system was such that he rhapsodised even 
over its weakest points : his most ecstatic homage was 
reserved for that omnipresent British snobbery (though 
he called it by other and prettier names), which seemed 
to him to be the cement of the whole fabric, and the 
secret of its strength, majesty and beauty. Perhaps he 
was not altogether wrong : this characteristic British 
virtue doubtless helped materially to ease the transition 
from landowning oligarchy to industrial democracy, kept 
a fine tradition alive, and led each new partner-class in 
turn to reproduce the habits of public spirit and public 
service which centuries of responsibility had bred in the 
best of the old ruling class. 

One of the principal merits of these two books (as of 
the system which they reflected) was that they definitely 
discarded the fallacy of the doctrine of ' division of 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 155 

powers ' between the executive and the legislature, and 
showed that real success in parliamentary government 
must depend upon the opposite principle of ' concentra- 
tion of responsibility.' They made it plain that the real 
function of a representative body is to control, regulate 
and criticise the work of the active elements of govern- 
ment ; that such a body must be not only incapable of 
actually conducting administrative work, but ill-adapted 
to initiate sound legislative or taxative proposals ; and 
that legislation and taxation are in most cases best con- 
sidered in the first instance by the men who are responsible 
for the direction of affairs, so long as these men carry on 
their work under unresting supervision. Bagehot especially 
devoted his admirable gift of lucid analysis to working 
out a clear account of the simple and delicate machinery — 
mainly traditional and customary in character — whereby 
these ends were attained in the British system : notably 
the Cabinet and its relation to the House of Commons. 

But it is remarkable that neither Mill nor Bagehot, 
acute and practised observers as they were, had anything 
of importance to say about two of the most significant 
features of the British system during this period. 

In the first place, neither of them in the least degree 
realised the high importance of the part played in the 
work of government, including legislation and taxation, 
by the bureaucrats, or salaried professional adminis- 
trators of the permanent civil service. 1 Mill has some 
perfunctory observations on the mode of appointment of 
civil servants ; Bagehot does not touch on the subject 
at all. They did not realise that as the sphere of govern- 
ment increased with the increasing complexity of modern 

1 There is an attempt to analyse the development of bureaucracy iq 
Britain in Peers and Bureaucrats (Constable, 1910), 



156 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

life, the importance, and therefore also the independence, 
of the bureaucrats must increase, even in unbureaucratic 
Britain. Both held the traditional British view that 
bureaucracy was a vicious system, essentially hostile to 
liberty ; they did not see that it had become an indis- 
pensable engine of government, and that the days when 
amateur politicians could adequately deal with all the 
problems of government were gone for ever. They 
shared the current view that the functions of government 
ought to be reduced to the minimum. Yet even in their 
own days the bureaucrats of the Poor Law Board and 
the Home Office were in fact determining the character 
and direction of British social policy ; the bureaucrats of 
the Colonial Office, like Sir James Stephen, had a principal 
part in the shaping of the new colonial policy which was 
one of the greatest achievements of this generation ; and 
these and other departments were very little considered 
or discussed in Parliament. Moreover, it was in this 
period (in 1858 and the following years) that the British 
civil service was rescued from the discredit which had 
previously attached to it, by being recruited by com- 
petitive examination. And as the men who won their 
way into the public offices by these means were among 
the ablest products of the universities, often far more 
brilliant than their contemporaries and class-mates who 
entered upon the traditional political career as members 
of the Houses of Lords and Commons, it was inevitable 
that they should magnify their offices, and that their 
restless energy, at a time when in any case the functions 
of government were steadily increasing, should enlarge 
the sphere of bureaucratic activity. We shall have occa- 
sion to discuss this development later. In the mean- 
time, the significant fact was that it was unperceived, 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 157 

even by the acutest of observers. What concealed it was 
the fiction (itself an outcome of the doctrine of ' concen- 
tration of responsibility ') which made the political head 
of each department solely responsible for everything that 
was done by his office, however impossible it might be for 
him to be aware of all its multifarious activities. Under 
the shelter of ministerial responsibility the power of 
bureaucracy was growing apace. But its growth had not 
yet become great enough to force itself upon the attention 
of students of British government, and, blinded by the 
theory of ministerial responsibility, not only Mill and 
Bagehot, but all their generation, and all the next, dis- 
regarded this process. For this reason they paid no 
attention to what are obviously among the greatest 
problems of any system of national self-government : the 
problem of securing that the right men are appointed to 
the vitally important positions which must be held by 
trained administrators ; and the problem of establishing 
a right relationship between them and the representative 
government whose servants they are, or ought to be — a 
relationship such as will ensure that their capacities are 
fully employed, but employed for ends which the nation 
wills, rather than for ends which they themselves determine. 
The second omission from these treatises was still more 
remarkable. It was the omission of any discussion of 
what was, and is, perhaps the most important guiding- 
wheel of the whole machine of government — the two- 
party system, whereby not only the House of Commons, 
but the whole nation, was in effect divided between two 
political parties, each eternally engaged in the endeavour 
either to maintain itself in office, or to drive its rival out 
of office. No analysis of the British system, especially 
during this period of its highest prestige and efficiency, 



158 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

which leaves this vital factor in it out of sight can be 
regarded as in any way adequate. 

The division of a whole nation into only two political 
parties must obviously be more or less unreal or arbitrary, 
since it would be absurd to suggest that there could ever 
be only two schools of thought in a nation. Yet, arbi- 
trary as it appears, this division has been extraordinarily 
persistent in Britain, and the continued dominance of 
the two historic parties was one of the most marked 
features of the period with which we are concerned. 
Whenever smaller groups were formed by scission from 
the two great parties, they always tended to be merged 
again, in a very short time. The Peelites broke away 
from the Tories, but they could not maintain their inde- 
pendent existence ; they soon became Whigs, and modi- 
fied the Whig creed by the infusion of their characteristic 
ideas. The Radicals prided themselves upon their dis- 
tinct programme, and were often troublesome to their 
leaders ; but they could generally be counted upon to 
vote straight in moments of crisis, in order to keep the 
Tories out of power. When new political groups were 
formed during this period, they were always groups 
within a party, not separately organised bodies. The 
main reasons for this remarkable feature of British 
political life were two. In the first place, the electoral 
system, which divided the country into single-member 
constituencies, was hostile to the growth of numerous 
parties : if the system of proportional representation 
which Mill favoured had been introduced, this obstacle 
to the multiplication of parties would have disappeared. 
But the second reason was more fundamental. In the 
British system the main business of the House of Commons 
was to make and unmake governments, and to control 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 150 

and check their activities. As politicians could only hope 
to maintain a government with whose principles they 
agreed, or to displace a government of whose principles 
they disapproved, by helping to make a stable majority 
for that purpose in the House of Commons, it was obviously 
necessary that they should subordinate their differences 
on minor matters in order to attain success in their prin- 
cipal aim. It was the responsibility for creating and 
destroying governments which more than anything else 
kept the House of Commons, and therefore the country, 
divided into two main parties. 

One of the dangers of this system was that national 
interests might be subordinated to party needs. This 
danger also applies to a multiple-party system ; and 
since men must always combine for common action in 
politics, the choice is not between party and no-party, 
but between two parties and many parties. It may in- 
deed be said that the more highly organised a party is, 
and the more ancient and deep-rooted the loyalty of its 
members, the greater is the danger that party interests 
may obscure national needs ; and that therefore the 
system of multiple parties, easily formed and easily dis- 
solved, may be a safeguard against this danger. Yet, on 
the other hand, it is probably true that the leaders of 
a great party, identified in the eyes of the nation with 
a long and honourable tradition, are less likely to go 
seriously astray than the leaders of an evanescent group, 
formed for the occasion of the moment. The risk that 
private or sectional interests may be given greater weight 
than national interests is indeed not peculiar to party 
government ; it exists in all forms of government, and 
the only safeguard against it is a high standard of public 
rectitude. That depends upon causes too deep to be 



166 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

affected by any system of political machinery. Yet it 
may fairly be said that the two-party system is a real 
safeguard against a decline in the standard of public rec- 
titude, just because each party knows that its opponents 
are eternally on the outlook for means of discrediting it, 
and are certain to pillory and exaggerate any departure 
from accepted standards of which it may be guilty. 

More serious is the danger that a two-party system 
may have the effect of unduly narrowing and stereotyping 
the political thought of the country, and that it may 
exclude from political life men of independent views who 
cannot bring themselves to pronounce all the shibboleths 
of either side. That is a real danger. But in the period 
with which we are concerned it did not seriously present 
itself. The bonds of party discipline were not yet very 
tightly drawn, and except on questions affecting the rise 
and fall of ministries, members of Parliament habitually 
exercised a far greater latitude of judgment than has 
since become usual. It is not easy to think of any 
leading Englishman of the period who might not have 
found a place happily enough within the hospitable 
limits of one or other of the great parties. Even O'Connell 
could regard himself as a Whig, though his darling object, 
the repeal of the Irish Act of Union, was anathema to 
the Whigs. 

If the system had dangers, therefore, they could not 
yet be called very marked defects. And it certainly 
possessed manifest virtues, which contributed in a striking 
way to maintain the political health of the nation, and 
to keep alive the political interests of its citizens. 

It ensured, in the first place, stability and coherence 
in the government — qualities which, as we have seen in 
studying the French system, it is not easy to combine 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 161 

with the control of a large and shifting public assembly. 
The ministry in power knew that it could count upon a 
steady majority so long as it did not alienate or outrage 
its followers ; it could count also upon a large degree 
of trust, such as is often necessary in great political 
affairs. 

It ensured, in the second place, the maintenance of an 
incessant and watchful criticism of all the actions of 
government by the party out of power — a criticism which 
would be diffused by the Press throughout the country, 
and taken seriously by the numerous supporters of the 
Opposition. At the same time it secured that this criti- 
cism should be responsible criticism, since the critics 
were always conscious that they might at any moment 
be called upon to assume the responsibilities of office, and 
to make good their assertions. The criticisms of loosely 
organised groups are apt to be irresponsible, and even if 
they be never so sound, they are not assured of public 
hearing. Thus the Opposition, under the two-party 
system, was called upon to perform a very weighty and 
important function ; it was ' Her Majesty's Opposition ' 
— a phrase which could only have been invented in 
Britain. It had to perform the duty which a barrister 
performs in the courts of law, of ensuring that both sides 
of a question are properly presented before the jury of 
public opinion ; and in doing this it helped to educate 
and guide the political thinking of the nation. 

The value of the ' watch-dog ' function of the rival 
parties in a two-party system may be illustrated by the 
history of one of the most useful political reforms of the 
period. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, posts 
' under government,' that is, positions in the civil service, 
were given solely by favour, and almost invariably on 



162 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

party grounds ; the distribution of patronage, even on 
the humblest scale, was one of the recognised means of 
strengthening party influence which each party expected 
to be able to use when it came into power. The practice 
never went so far, it is true, as it did in America ; though 
men were appointed on the ground of their politics, they 
were never dismissed wholesale when the rival party took 
office. But the system was manifestly an evil one, and, 
in particular, it involved that the public offices contained 
many incompetents, and that their work was often in- 
efficiently done. In 1858 appointments began to be 
made by competitive examinations, with such good 
results that the new method was rapidly extended, and 
the efficiency of the public service was greatly increased. 
But the point which concerns us is, that once the new 
system was established, its existence was made secure 
by the working of the two-party system. For the party 
in power dared not risk the damaging attacks to which 
it would certainly be exposed at the hands of the Opposi- 
tion if it should depart from the new method, or show 
unwillingness to extend it. The watch -dog function of 
Her Majesty's Opposition thus ensured purity of ad- 
ministration. Had there been many parties, the tempta- 
tion to use patronage for the purchase of the support of 
this party or that would have been very great ; and the 
groups themselves, individually too weak to aim at 
power, and therefore apt to be irresponsible, would have 
been tempted to hope that they might strengthen them- 
selves by being given the disposal of patronage, and 
would therefore have been likely to be silent. Unques- 
tionably the two-party system was a safeguard against 
certain kinds of political corruption. 
Nor does this end the catalogue of its merits. The 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 163 

system simplified and clarified the issues of national 
politics, no doubt in a rather arbitrary way, yet with 
the result that they were closely and intelligently followed 
by the public. It focussed attention upon what is after 
all the main question — the character, conduct, and aims 
of government ; and it made the public discussion of 
these themes appear to be worth while, because the 
popular will could and did ultimately determine the main 
issues. It caused the Press to fill its columns with dis- 
cussions of great questions of national concern, and with 
reports of the proceedings of Parliament, which the 
ordinary man followed with interest just because they 
were simplified by the party conflict. It turned the full 
glare of publicity upon the responsible directors of 
national policy, made the life of public service seem to be 
(what, on any lofty view, it ought to be) the noblest and 
most fascinating of careers, tempted young men of ability 
to aspire after it, and turned the great party leaders on 
both sides into national heroes. Their leadership, under 
the stable conditions of British politics, lasted long enough 
to make them familiar figures, whose personalities and 
ideas were known and canvassed from one end of the 
country to the other. They became the embodiments of 
the causes and ideas for which they strove, and this 
association of ideas with great personalities made them 
far more interesting and intelligible to ordinary men, 
who do not anywhere move freely in the realm of ideas. 
Palmerston and Derby in the early years of the period, 
Gladstone and Disraeli in its later years, held the attention 
of the nation as few of their successors in Britain, and 
few of their contemporaries in Europe, were able to do. 
Bismarck, indeed, exercised an even more commanding 
ascendancy over the mind of Germany. But he stood 



164 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

alone. He could not, like the British leaders, represent 
an endless conflict of rival principles, vital enough to 
command the loyalty of masses of men. 

There is no doubt that the working of the two-party 
system, and the fascination which its conflicts exercised 
upon men's minds, contributed very powerfully to ease the 
transition into democracy. For the newly enfranchised 
classes followed the fascinating duel with an interest 
equal to that of the middle class. They too could and 
did joyfully enrol themselves under the banners of the 
rival heroes, and fight for the triumph of their party. 
They could feel the delight of sharing in the greatest of 
all games, as humble members of a vast team under the 
captaincy of demigods ; the prize of victory being no less 
than the control of the fortunes of a great nation, and the 
chance of realising their principles for its welfare. In- 
stead of being tempted to concentrate all their attention 
upon their class interests, and to use their power for these 
ends alone, they were led to participate in the discussion 
of questions affecting all classes equally, of questions 
affecting the wide dominions of the British Empire, and 
the fortunes of civilisation. And one of the rules of this 
noble game was the fine rule that both sides must play 
fair, must assume that their opponents are honest, and 
must accept the result of the fight frankly, and not take 
to smashing the windows of the pavilion in the dis- 
appointment of defeat. Is there something unworthy in 
this comparison of politics to a great game ? Not neces- 
sarily : the spirit of sportsmanship, of comradeship in a 
common cause, of loyalty to the rules, is a very healthy 
and sane spirit to introduce into political life. There is 
a real kinship between the sportsmanship which is one 
of the outstanding qualities of the Briton, and the 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 165 

political capacity which is another of his qualities. And 
it cannot be denied that the two-party system appealed 
very strongly indeed to the sporting instinct, and enlisted 
it in the service of politics. 

The political system of Britain, then, with the two- 
party system as one of its vital elements, showed itself 
capable of digesting a vast new addition to the body of 
its ' active citizens ' without losing its character, or 
making any sudden breach with its traditions. Yet the 
great change of 1867 produced an immediate and per- 
ceptible effect. The process of national reconstruction 
which the industrial revolution had necessitated, had 
flagged in a marked way between 1846 and 1867 ; the 
mere presence in the electoral body of the new elements 
stimulated a new advance. One of the early results of 
1867 was the full legal recognition of trade unions, which 
had done such invaluable work during the previous 
generation, by an Act of 1871. Another result was the 
introduction of universal compulsory education by the 
Acts of 1870 and 1875. Before 1870 not much more 
than half of the children of Britain received even an 
elementary education, though the great majority of the 
newly enfranchised classes were literate. But since 
Britain was to be a democracy, her citizens must be 
educated : otherwise one of the fundamental conditions 
of self-government would be unfulfilled. This involved 
the assumption of a vast new responsibility by the State, 
which had hitherto been content to leave educational 
work to private enterprise, only assisting and subsidising 
it. But it is instructive to note — and it is very char- 
acteristic of British methods — that even when the State 
had assumed responsibility, it did not attempt to enforce 
any rigid uniformity of method throughout the country, 



166 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

such as the bureaucracies of France and Germany en- 
forced. It has never been possible for a British educa- 
tional officer to boast, as French administrators are said 
to have boasted, ' at this hour every boy of ten in the 
country is reading such and such a book.' The old 
voluntary agencies which had created the existing schools 
were left to work much as before ; and the business of 
co-ordinating their work, and of establishing new public 
schools to fill gaps, was entrusted to new elected local 
bodies, the creation of which extended the sphere of local 
self-government. They were all brought under central 
supervision ; but the motive-power was in the self-govern- 
ing bodies, only a supervisory or regulating authority 
in the central bureaucracy. Hence not only was self- 
government strengthened, but variety of method was in 
some degree encouraged. 

In truth, throughout this period, both before and after 
1867, one of the features of British life was the increasing 
multiplication of local bodies for all kinds of purposes — 
Boards of Health, Burial Boards, Road Boards, Boards 
of Guardians, School Boards. Their multiplicity formed 
one of the most impressive contrasts between self- 
governing Britain and the bureaucratic lands of Europe, 
where all this administrative work was, for the most part, 
highly centralised. At the same time, the older local 
authorities, and especially the Municipal Councils of the 
towns, were steadily enlarging their powers, and assuming 
a multitude of new functions. There was no uniformity 
or system in all this development. Each Town Council, 
when it found the need for new powers, applied to Parlia- 
ment for a private Act. And all this pullulating activity 
was submitted to scarcely any supervision or control by 
the national government. It was the spontaneous activity 



THE ERA OF NATIONAL UNIFICATION 167 

of a self-governing people, other aspects of which were 
to be found in the innumerable voluntary organisations 
for religious, charitable, political, commercial, and indus- 
trial purposes which daily sprang into being. The result 
was a strange confusion and conflict of jurisdictions. 
There came to be so many and various public authorities 
that the ordinary citizen, their subject and their master, 
lost track of them and interest in their proceedings. Even 
the areas which they administered seldom coincided. 
One publicist complained, towards the end of the period, 
that he had to pay rates to no less than fourteen public 
authorities, no two of which dealt with the same area. 
Some co-ordination and concentration was obviously 
necessary. The process was begun by the institution of 
the Local Government Board in 1871. But it is pro- 
foundly characteristic of Britain, and an evidence of the 
strength of the self-governing spirit by which the whole 
community was permeated, that the organisation of the 
British society for common purposes proceeded thus, not 
from the top downwards, but from the bottom upwards. 
One last feature of British political life in this period 
remains to be noted. It was the sign of a coming change ; 
it was also a product of the growing national habit of 
political discussion. During this period, but especially 
after 1867, the importance of the platform and the public 
meeting grew by leaps and bounds. Instead of confining 
themselves almost wholly, as had been the custom of 
the past, to the debates in Parliament, leading statesmen 
began to make a regular practice of appealing to the 
public directly — not merely to their constituents, but to 
the whole mass of the electorate. The leaders of this 
change were John Bright (who had served his apprentice- 
ship during the Anti-Corn Law agitation) and Gladstone. 



168 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

It was a valuable means of forwarding the political 
education of the people, because the speeches composed 
for these purposes necessarily dealt with broad issues and 
leading principles, rather than with the practical details 
and the party manoeuvres appropriate to the House of 
Commons. At the same time, it foreshadowed a diminu- 
tion in the importance of Parliament, which ceased to be 
the sole arena of important political discussion. 

Manifestly the Britain of 1878 was a genuinely self- 
governing state. Manifestly, also, the practice of self- 
government on these lines made for the intellectual and 
moral development of the nation, as well as for its 
material welfare. But the notion, implicit in Bagehot's 
book, and in a less degree in Mill's, that finality had been 
almost or altogether attained, was a false notion. Under 
the appearance of fixity, great changes were preparing ; 
and the spirit of self-government was working for its yet 
more abundant fulfilment. 



VIII 

RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION, 1878-1900 

The age of nationalist victories, and of rapid constitu- 
tional changes in the chief civilised states, was succeeded 
by a generation during which (with one conspicuous 
exception) no fundamental change was made in the 
system of government of any of the leading states, so 
that the world seemed to have attained a condition of 
stability. Enlargements of the franchise, such as took 
place in Britain in 1884 or in Holland in 1887, did not 
involve any fundamental change. The one case in which 
a large reconstruction was undertaken during this period 
was the case of Japan. Having resolved, after the revolu- 
tion of 1868, to adopt the methods of Western civilisa- 
tion, Japan had been at first content to leave the control 
of her affairs, during the rapid adoption of the material 
devices of the West, to the absolute power of the Mikado. 
But in 1878 the first step towards self-government was 
taken by the institution of a measure of local autonomy, 
through the institution of elected councils in each of the 
forty-five ' departments ' of the country. In 1882 the 
laws were codified, and Western judicial methods intro- 
duced. And in 1889 the new system was crowned by the 
establishment of a Parliament of two Houses after the 
European model, a House of Lords and, a Chamber of 
Deputies, the latter elected on a moderate franchise. 
But the ministry was not made dependent upon this 



110 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

Parliament. The immense prestige of the Mikado, whose 
dynasty was beyond comparison the most ancient ruling 
house in the world, together with the novelty of the in- 
stitutions of self-government, made it natural that the 
Crown should retain the power of appointing ministers. 
Thus Japan followed rather the German than the British 
type. 

But although the changes in the political systems of 
this period were, in the European world, few and com- 
paratively unimportant, the period was nevertheless of 
the highest significance in the history of national self- 
government, because it afforded opportunities for testing 
the working and efficiency of the new methods, and for 
comparing the results of their various types. And this 
test was all the more instructive because of the novelty 
and difficulty of the conditions under which they had to 
work. For it was a period, in the first place, of extreme 
precariousness and delicacy in the relations between the 
principal states, and, in the second place, of extra- 
ordinarily rapid development and change in the conditions 
of industry. And both of these things tried the temper 
of the new governmental systems, and searched out their 
weak points. 

Although no European wars of any importance were 
fought during this generation, it was a period of intense and 
growing nervousness of war. The peace which the world 
enjoyed was an ' armed peace,' during which all the great 
States were engaged in heaping up armaments against one 
another, and training an ever-increasing number of their 
citizens for war. The responsibility for this state of things 
rests, beyond any shadow of doubt, upon Germany. Her 
startling victories, gained in wars which she had de- 
liberately provoked, had shown all other States that 



HIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 171 

their very existence might depend upon their immediate 
readiness for war. Though Germany was beyond com- 
parison the first military State in Europe, she had fortified 
herself by the formation of a standing alliance (the Triple 
Alliance, 1879 and 1882) which enabled her absolutely 
to dominate Europe. Every other State was forced to 
realise that Germany held in her hands the issues of peace 
and war. They were all (especially France) for ever 
conscious of their insecurity ; and it was inevitable that 
a rival league should be formed as a protection against 
this overwhelming dominance of a power which had proved 
that it did not hesitate to provoke war when it seemed 
likely to be profitable. Not content with the remark- 
able ascendancy which she possessed, Germany con- 
tinued, at intervals of a few years, to increase the numbers 
of her soldiers, and the elaborate perfection of her 
material of war ; and other States were driven to follow 
the same path. The hideousness of this state of things 
was widely felt, and led to the attempt, at the Hague 
Conference of 1899, to put an end to the competition 
of armaments by agreement. The attempt was ruined 
by the flat refusal of Germany even to consider such a 
proposal. 

In several ways this appalling waste of wealth and 
manhood profoundly affected the working of the new 
systems of national government. In the first place, the 
mere financial burden of it strained the resources of all 
States, and to a large extent deprived them of the means 
of adequately reorganising their social systems. For that 
reason it also encouraged the dissatisfaction of the mass 
of men with the existing social order. The Marxian 
school, trained to regard ' capital ' as the root of all evil, 
attributed this state of things to its malign influence ; 



172 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENt 

hence the movement of social democracy and the ' class 
war,' inspired by Marx's doctrines, which had achieved 
little during the period of nationalist victories because 
the national cause had everywhere been able to appeal 
to men's loyalty, was fostered and strengthened. On 
the other hand, revolution of a violent kind began to 
appear impossible, just because the military power which 
governments could wield was so overwhelming. And as 
the international co-operation of the working classes, 
who seemed to suffer most from it, appeared to many to 
be the only practicable way of shaking off this night- 
mare, the Marxian-Socialist movement once again became 
an international movement. From 1889 onwards there 
were regular international conferences of Socialists. They 
were far more numerously attended than their predeces- 
sors of 1864-73. 

Again, the high importance attached during these years 
to military organisation, and to the complex details of 
foreign policy upon which so much might hang, provided 
an extremely hard test for parliamentary institutions. 
They are at their weakest in dealing with these subjects, 
because the citizens of a democracy cannot have an 
adequate knowledge of the obscure intrigues in remote 
places upon which, in such a state of international 
relations, the issues of peace and war must often depend ; 
while a democracy is also little capable of understanding 
the complex problems of the military art. In such a 
state of things autocracy has every advantage, if it is 
well served. And it is no mere coincidence that the 
country which was primarily responsible for this state 
of things was Germany, a country wherein, as we have 
seen, under the veil of parliamentary institutions, a 
military and bureaucratic autocracy really controlled 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 173 

national policy. In dealing with the kind of problems 
thus forced upon the world, parliamentary government 
was apt to show itself at its worst. If it adopted the 
methods of open discussion which its spirit seemed to 
demand, it invited confusion and left itself disarmed and 
helpless before its secretive, competent, unresting rival, 
which needed to make no compromises and no confessions. 
If it adopted the secrecy demanded by the ever-present 
danger of war, and by the kind of diplomacy which this 
state of things necessitated, it naturally aroused the 
suspicion and distrust of its subjects. Parliamentary 
government, so recently established in most of the 
European countries, could not have been submitted to 
a more difficult test than that afforded by the problems 
of the armed peace and the German dominance. It is 
not surprising that there should be perceptible, through- 
out the period, a growing sense of dissatisfaction with 
its working. 

While all the great European States were thus watching 
and suspecting one another, forming rival leagues, and 
heaping up the materials of destruction, the development 
of applied science was transforming the conditions of 
industry with unheard-of rapidity, and the ingenious 
methods of modern finance, whereby all the innumerable 
rivulets of private thrift were canalised and brought 
under the control of a handful of organisers in each 
country, were rendering possible enterprises upon a scale 
never before known, were unifying and centralising the 
direction of the principal industries, and were increasing 
the complexity of the relations among the leading States, 
and also between these States and the rest of the world. 
' High Finance ' was becoming a greater power in States, 
and in the relations of States, than ever before ; the gulf 



174 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

between the masters of industry and the mass of men 
who were its servants seemed to be growing greater. 
This development presented very complex and difficult 
problems to the rulers of all States. The suspicion began 
to grow, in the self-governing countries, that representa- 
tive bodies were unduly dominated by the influence of 
these forces. Even the most sincere of democrats were 
baffled by the difficulty of controlling their action without 
undermining national prosperity. Here again the task 
was easiest for an autocratic government which had a 
clearly defined aim of national domination before it ; for 
such a government could strike an alliance with the 
controllers of finance and industry, and use them as 
implements for its purposes, while democracy, aiming 
not at Power so much as at Justice, could find no such 
simple solution. But whether in the autocratic state or 
in the democratic state, these developments tended to 
increase the appeal of the Marxian doctrine of class-war 
to the mass of men who vaguely felt themselves exploited. 
Marx's theory that capital would be so concentrated in 
course of time that it could be readily conquered and 
subjugated seemed to be justified by facts, and became 
more plausible than ever. Hence the astounding indus- 
trial development of the period helped to undermine the 
confidence of many men in government by discussion and 
agreement, and led them rather to look to a pitiless war 
of classes for improvement. Large sections of the work- 
ing class became distrustful of the bona fides of their 
representatives, and began to lose patience with the 
slow proceedings of deliberative assemblies. On the other 
hand, the organisers and directors of the new develop- 
ments, inclined in any case to be distrustful of democracy, 
were tempted to envy in some respects the position of 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 175 

their rivals in countries otherwise governed. This tend- 
ency was not as yet, indeed, fully displayed during the 
period under review ; but it was at work already, though 
it was to become more manifest in the next period. 

Finally, this portentous generation saw an extraordi- 
narily rapid extension of the dominion of Europe over 
the non-European world. It was par excellence the 
period of Imperialism in all the European countries, and 
even in America. The subjugation of the non-European 
world by European civilisation which was finally achieved 
during these years was in itself not an evil, but a good 
thing x ; Europe had much to give to the outer world, and 
in giving it was bringing about the world's unification. 
But the great process took place in an unhappy way. It 
seemed to be, and in many respects it was, too much 
motived by the desire for mere exploitation, and too much 
controlled by financial interests. And it was carried out 
by means of a fierce rivalry among the European States, 
under the influence of the mutual fears and suspicions 
born of the state into which Europe had fallen. These 
facts led many men to distrust and dislike the whole 
movement, and to visit it, in all its aspects, with an 
undiscriminating and unscientific condemnation, which 
supplied fresh fuel for the movement of revolt against 
the whole existing order. Already, before the period 
closed, the unrest which was to grow to considerable 
dimensions in the next period, was very clearly showing 
itself. And this, too, added to the difficulties of the 
representative system. There has seldom in the course 
of history been a complex of problems more bewildering, 
more likely to create deep antipathies, and less easy of 

1 See The Expansion of Europe, chap, vii., for a survey and analysis 
of these events. 



176 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

solution by the processes of discussion, than those which 
this period presented to the governments of civilised 
States. The parliamentary system was indeed being put 
to a severe test. In all the more highly developed 
countries the main problems were of much the same kind. 
In all countries definite Socialist organisations, more or 
less clearly adopting the principles of Karl Marx, were 
being brought into existence, to be bitterly suppressed 
in some cases, but given free opportunities in others. 
In all countries the supreme government found itself 
compelled, in spite of the increasing burden of warlike 
preparation and the distraction of foreign problems, to 
undertake larger and larger functions. It will be our 
task to consider with what degree of success the diffi- 
culties of the period were met in various countries, and 
whether the British and French form of government, in 
which the executive was under popular control, achieved 
as good results as the German form, in which the executive 
was free from control. 

The most outstanding feature of the period was the 
great and growing prestige of the German system, which 
seemed to be largely responsible for the amazing progress 
of German industry and commerce, as well as for the 
impressive political ascendancy which Germany enjoyed 
in Europe. While other countries were torn asunder by 
controversy, and pursued a wavering and uncertain 
policy, Germany, however great her internal differences 
might be, seemed to be able to follow clear, fixed, and 
definite aims. Although her new imperial system, with 
the dominance of Prussia upon which it rested, had 
seemed by no means secure at the moment of its founda- 
tion, and had been regarded with some resentment both 
by some of the lesser German states, and by many of the 



MVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 177 

most vigorous schools of political thought, before the end 
of the period its ascendancy over the nation was unques- 
tioned, and Germans had begun to boast that they 
possessed the most perfect and efficient system of govern- 
ment that had ever existed in the world. It cannot be 
denied that the system unified and consolidated the 
nation in a remarkable degree, contributed very greatly 
to its amazing economic development, and assured to it 
an unchallenged leadership in European politics, and the 
respect (not unmingled with dread) of all other nations. 
These were great achievements. The only question is, 
was the price paid for them too high ? That question 
can only be answered by some analysis of the methods 
by which these remarkable results were attained. 

In the first place, the Prussian-German State was 
resolute to deny freedom to any forces which did not 
accept full subordination to the State, or which pro- 
claimed ideals inconsistent with its principles. First 
among such forces ranked the Christian Churches ; for 
the ideals of Christianity are not naturally in harmony 
with the ideals of Prussianism, and through many 
centuries the Christian Churches have fought against the 
impious doctrine that Might is Right. Just because of 
this natural antipathy between Christianity and the 
Prussian creed, many modern Germans have followed 
Nietzsche in the repudiation of Christian morality, and 
have even foretold the rise of a new German national 
religion, 1 a revival of the old worship of Odin and Thor, 

1 On a Sunday afternoon in July 1914 the writer was profoundly 
impressed by a sort of religious service which he heard in the great 
Vdlkerschlachtdenkmal at Leipzig. In a dim circular hall which is 
carved out of the heart of that gigantic, ugly and lowering column of 
masonry, he found a silent standing throng, all gazing upwards into 
the high dome, past the cruel, impassive, colossal faces into which the 

M 



178 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

which should give its reverence to Might rather than to 
the anaemic virtues of Justice and Love, which the ' pale 
Galilean ' preached. But Germany remains, at any rate 
conventionally, a Christian country ; and it was neces- 
sary for the supremacy of the Prussian system that the 
official exponents of Christianity should be reduced to 
submission, and turned from critics into prophets of the 
Doctrine of Power. 

With the Lutheran Church there was no difficulty. 
Since the time of Luther himself it has always been more 
submissive to the secular power than any other Church. 
It is a State Church in a higher degree than any other. 
The Emperor is its supreme bishop, and he takes his 
function seriously. Its pastors are largely paid by the 
State, not, like the Anglican clergy, out of independent 
endowments ; they are controlled by a department of 
State, and are, in theory and practice alike, State officials. 
But the Roman Church, which commands the allegiance 
of almost half of the German nation, especially in the 
south and west, was apt to be more independent. In 
attempting to subjugate it Bismarck was drawn into a 
fierce conflict, known as the Kulturkampf, which lasted 
from 1873 to 1878. His aim, as defined by an eminent 
German historian, was ' to increase the influence of the 
State over the Catholic Church, and to put an end to all 
encroachments by the Church in the political and social 
sphere ' ; and for that purpose a severe persecuting code 
was enacted during the years 1873-75. He did not win 
a complete victory ; in 1878, in order to free his hands for 

heavy stone buttresses are carved. Then there came floating down, 
from an invisible choir far above, thrilling chorales, paeans in the praise 
of Deutschland. It was strange, moving, and horrible; and the 
listener felt that he was assisting at a festival of a new and grim 
religion, from which pity was banished. 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 179 

another struggle, he accepted a compromise, withdrew 
his penal code, and made an informal political alliance 
with the Papacy. But in effect, as events have shown, 
he had won. The German Catholics accepted the imperial 
system, with its doctrine of State omnipotence. The 
clergy of the Roman Church, like the Lutheran, are in 
great part paid by the State ; and the government has 
a power of veto in the election of its bishops. There has 
always been a powerful Catholic party in the Reichstag, 
and it has often held the balance ; but it has never 
challenged the State-system or the moral ideas upon 
which it rests. We have seen during the Great War 
how profound has been the real victory of Bismarck's 
spirit. The Centre (Catholic) party, and the Catholic 
ecclesiastics of Germany, have accepted and justified, as 
readily as the Lutherans, all the abhorrent acts of the 
German State, and all its repudiations of moral restraints ; 
they have even defended the murder of priests and nuns 
in Belgium, and found no word of support for the noble 
courage of Cardinal Mercier. 

The Kulturkampf was followed by an equally resolute 
struggle against Socialism. The Socialists had closed 
their ranks at the Gotha conference in 1875, and in 1877 
they had twelve representatives in the Reichstag. Bis- 
marck saw in the emergence of this consolidated party 
a menace to that autocratic and class ascendancy 
and that ideal of domination which formed the essence 
of the Prussian system. He had no objection at all to 
State Socialism in itself, as he was soon to show ; State 
Socialism, administered by the existing ruling elements, 
could only serve to increase their power and their hold 
over the life of the nation, and was therefore entirely in 
accord with the Prussian system. But the claim of the 



ISO NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

Marxians that the socialised State should be controlled 
by the proletariate challenged the power of the monarchy 
and its servants, and against this claim Bismarck declared 
war to the knife. It was the democratic side, not the 
socialist side, of Social Democracy which he feared. In 
1878 he got the Reichstag to pass a series of persecuting 
laws against the Socialists, whereby their newspapers 
were forbidden to appear, their meetings were prohibited, 
and their organisations suppressed. Renewed from time to 
time until 1890, these restrictions practically destroyed 
the overt Socialist movement for the time being. But 
it was only driven underground, and its resentment was 
intensified. In 1890 the restrictions were withdrawn 
by the new Emperor, William n., and this departure 
from his accepted policy formed the chief cause of the 
breach between Bismarck and the Emperor. Hence- 
forth the Socialists were free to elect representatives to 
the Reichstag ; their numbers grew rapidly, and in the 
election of 1898 they obtained over two million votes 
and fifty -six seats. But they were, of course, powerless 
to affect the policy of government, since the Reichstag 
possesses no control over ministers ; they could only 
talk, not act, however large their numbers. They were 
still regarded as the declared enemies of the State, as 
the Emperor very frankly told his soldiers, when he 
warned them that it might become their duty to fire 
upon their brothers and fathers who were Socialists. 
Socialist newspapers were allowed to appear, but were 
proscribed in reading-rooms under public control, and 
in army barracks ; while no government servant, how- 
ever humble, could become a Socialist without risking 
his livelihood. In effect, however, the admission of the 
Socialists to political life largely tamed them ; they 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 181 

accepted in practice the existing system, though they 
repudiated it in theory ; like the rest of the nation, they 
had to submit to the subtle influences of the schools and 
the barracks ; and we have seen, during the course of the 
Great War, how effective this taming process has been. 
In truth, without knowing it, the German Socialists 
became useful agents of the German government. As 
they were numerically stronger than the Socialists of 
other countries, and had a certain prestige as the country- 
men of Marx, they exercised a great influence in the 
International Socialist Congresses. Excluded themselves 
from all possibility of sharing in the government of 
Germany, they erected this exclusion into a principle, 
and preached to their fellows in other countries the 
necessity of abstaining from any direct participation in 
national government, and of maintaining an unresting 
opposition, until the vague and distant day when the 
social revolution should be consummated. They there- 
fore discouraged many Socialists in other countries from 
playing the part which they might have played in the 
political life of their own nations, and helped to keep 
alive that undiscriminating hostility to any and all 
governments which, in genuinely democratic States, must 
have none but evil effects. Powerless at home, and be- 
coming progressively tamer, the German Social Democrats 
actually served the cause of their autocratic and militarist 
government by using all their influence to undermine 
the national unity of all Germany's rivals and intended 
victims. More openly and more consciously they have 
played the same game during the war. 

Another element hostile to the system of the German 
State, an element which dared to have independent ideals 
of its own, was to be found in the protesting fragments 



182 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

of non-German nationalities which had been forcibly in- 
cluded in the German Empire : the Danes of Sleswig, 
the Poles of Posen, and, above all, the French of Alsace 
and Lorraine. Towards them the policy of the German 
government has always been one of ruthless intolerance. 
They must become German in thought and spirit, or 
forfeit the rights of equal citizenship. Against them 
Bismarck and all his successors have pursued a policy 
which has sometimes varied in its methods, but never in 
its spirit : a policy not of spasmodic terrorism like that 
of Russia in Poland or of Turkey in Armenia, but of 
unresting, hard, efficient, grinding persecution. The 
German State is tolerant of differences of opinion and 
ideals so long as they do not undermine the supremacy 
of the State, or challenge the aims which the State has 
set before itself ; beyond that point tolerance stops. 

It was in the sphere of social organisation that the 
hard efficiency of German government most fully dis- 
played itself. Here the aim was what it had always 
been in the Prussian State since the time of Frederick the 
Great. Everything must be done to make the community 
prosperous and strong, and to remove preventible ills 
which told against national efficiency. But the ultimate 
end of these labours must be strength for war — for the 
war of commerce as well as for the war of arms — with a 
view to the establishment of German supremacy over 
other nations. The State must be organised as a vast 
army, healthy, well found, united in sentiment, equipped 
in all respects for conflict. But the spirit which was to 
inspire this army must not be the product of a free 
fermentation of thought among its soldiers ; that would 
be subversive of discipline. It must be inspired from 
above. The use to be made of this mighty organised force 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 183 

must not be determined by itself, but by its masters. 
It is for the headquarters staff of an army first of 
all to organise it, and, secondly, to determine how it 
shall be employed. And the headquarters staff of 
Germany consisted of the Hohenzollern monarchy with 
those classes and interests upon whose loyalty it could 
depend. 

The most remarkable aspect of Bismarck's legislation 
during the 'eighties was his scheme of State insurance 
against invalidity, old age, and unemployment, which was 
far in advance of anything yet attempted in any other 
State. Its aim was not merely to spike the guns of the 
Socialists by demonstrating to the working class that the 
State was its best friend. It was also motived by the 
belief that such provision made for national well-being and 
efficiency. But perhaps its main purpose was to teach 
the mass of Germans to trust to the State rather than to 
their own action. All spontaneous efforts after ameliora- 
tion among the workpeople, such as the co-operative 
societies after the British pattern, which were now be- 
ginning to thrive, or the trade union organisations, were 
uniformly frowned upon and discouraged, just because they 
tended to weaken dependence upon the State, and to en- 
courage independence and initiative among the masses of 
the people, among the privates of the national army. The 
German system does not believe in self-help. 

In the task of organising the national economy, of hus- 
banding and developing the material resources of the com- 
munity, Germany showed herself far ahead of all other 
nations. Indeed we may fairly say that no State has ever 
taken a more enlarged or a more enlightened view of its 
functions in this respect. In pursuing this end Bismarck 
and his successors carried State Socialism to a higher pitch 



184 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

than any other State. They nationalised the railways, and 
administered them with a view primarily to the needs of 
war, secondarily to the needs of trade, and only in the 
third place to the earning of profits. They systematically 
developed the forests of the country under State con- 
trol, and scientific administration. They gave the most 
assiduous attention to the natural waterways in which their 
country is so rich, and supplemented them with a great 
system of admirably devised and admirably managed 
canals. They encouraged to the utmost extent the de- 
velopment of scientific agriculture, with a view to making 
the nation self-supporting even when it became industrial- 
ised ; and in doing so they held always in mind the needs 
of war. At the same time they took in hand the organisa- 
tion of the nation's commerce and industry ; gave sub- 
sidies to shipping lines ; encouraged the organisation of 
the country's banking system in such a way as to facilitate 
in the highest degree the rapid expansion of trade by 
making credit easily available ; fostered the centralisa- 
tion of the chief industries by the creation of Kartels 
or working agreements for the avoidance of waste by 
competition ; and spared no pains to assist industrial 
enterprise not only by the lavish endowment of 
scientific research, but by helping to cover the world 
with a network of German commercial agencies. All 
this, indeed, was in the Prussian tradition : Prussian 
governments have acted so since the days of Frederick 
William in the early eighteenth century. They have re- 
garded the whole country as in the last resort the estate of 
the monarchy, and they have always been careful to make 
it yield as much as possible, in order that it might be able 
to stand the strain of maintaining great armies, and form 
a solid basis for the extension of power ; and no rights of 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 185 

private property have been allowed to stand in the way of 
this policy. 

Now one result of these brilliantly conducted activities 
was that the capitalist and industrial classes, once the 
staunchest supporters of liberal institutions after the 
British pattern, were won over to an ardent support of 
the policy of government. Bismarck, indeed, through- 
out made a point of allying himself with the National 
Liberal party, which drew its strength from these classes, 
even running the risk of alienating the Conservative 
Junkers ; and the National Liberals have ever since been 
a government party ; they are among the staunchest 
supporters of the present war. In adopting this policy, 
Bismarck knew well what he was doing. He saw the 
importance of industrial wealth to a State which aimed 
at supremacy in the modern world. He perhaps foresaw 
— certainly his successors foresaw — that future wars 
would be waged in the factory even more than in the 
field. And he perhaps perceived, as his successors have 
certainly perceived, that the warfare of commerce, if 
pursued with the methods and in the spirit of the General 
Staff, by systematic and co-ordinated activity, could be 
used as a means of undermining and weakening the 
nation's rivals, and preparing the way for national 
ascendancy. Therefore, he took pains to knit the in- 
dustrial classes to the Hohenzollern State by placing at 
their disposal all the strength of the State. And from 
this alliance and this guidance German industry learned 
to pursue the aim of not merely making wealth, but 
making war, and preparing the way for the culminating 
onset of armies and fleets. The characteristically German 
arts of peaceful penetration had already attained a high 
degree of efficiency before this period closed. Already 



186 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

they had turned commerce from being (what it had 
seemed in the rosy vision of Cobden and his school) a 
maker of peace, into being one of the most formidable 
weapons of war. 

The ability and method with which the organisation of 
the nation's resources, and the co-ordination of its trading 
activities, were carried out under the direction of the 
State had the effect of increasing the hold of government, 
through the bureaucracy, upon all the material aspects 
of national life, and of winning for it at once gratitude and 
support. But more than this was necessary. The mind 
of the nation, and not merely its material activities, must 
be tamed and brought under the control of government : 
the nation must be taught to ' think to order,' and to 
accept unquestioningly whatever moral and political ideas 
its masters might choose to impose upon it. Public opinion 
must not be left to shape itself freely under the influence 
of all the various currents of modern thought ; in the 
political field, at least, it must be turned (as modern 
Germans have boasted that it has been turned) into ' an 
orchestra which answers only to the baton of government.' 
The achievement of this end has been the greatest and 
most terrible of the victories of Prussianism ; nor has 
anything more directly contributed to the strength and 
discipline of this conquering State. 

The victory had been already half -won by the immense 
and resounding triumphs which the Prussian spirit had 
achieved in 1866 and 1870. Already, under the influ- 
ence of these triumphs, the most distinguished historians 
and philosophers of Germany had begun to glorify 
the methods of Prussianism, to find in the historic prin- 
ciples of the Hohenzollern house the essentials of sound 
political thinking, and to become the advocates of a 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 187 

doctrine of Realpolitik more unblushingly materialist and 
cynical than any propounded to the world since the days 
of Machiavelli. In the vitally important realms of 
history and political science the German universities, 
which had once been the centres of liberal thought, 
increasingly became the pulpits of the doctrine of Power, 
the doctrine that force, rather than justice, is what holds 
the State together, and that the increase of brute power, 
rather than the enlargement of justice, should be its aim. 
It was not necessary, therefore, to conquer the uni- 
versities ; they became voluntary captives. But it was 
easy to accentuate their submissiveness, because the uni- 
versities were all State institutions, and all their teachers 
were appointed and promoted by the State. The greatest 
glory of the German universities in the past had been 
their Lehrfreiheit, the absolute freedom of their teachers 
to teach whatever seemed to them true. In form this 
freedom was not impaired. In fact, every teacher in a 
Prussian university (more especially the professor of 
history, politics, or economics) knew that his chances 
of advancement depended upon the coincidence of his 
conception of truth with the official doctrine ; and the 
man of independent opinions, the man who declined to 
make himself a mouthpiece for the glorification of the 
Hohenzollern dynasty and the ideas for which it stood, 
usually found that he was left to pine in the obscure and 
ill-remunerated ranks of the privat-dozenten. A single 
instance may suffice to illustrate the extent to which 
government control has sometimes been carried. In 
1902 the Professor of Jurisprudence at Breslau was 
lecturing on the law of succession to the throne. He did 
not dare to discuss the absurd theory of Divine Right, 
to which the Hohenzollerns still cling ; he merely said 



188 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

that he would pass it over, as being a non-legal subject. 
But before long he received a warning and a rebuke from 
the Minister of Education, in which he was told that 
while he was, of course, free to teach whatever he liked, 
he must ' reckon with the possibility of his services being 
no longer required.' That is, no doubt, an extreme case ; 
the Prussian government is not so stupid as often to 
repeat such manifest blunders. But with such a spirit 
in power, controlling all the avenues of academic pro- 
motion and distinction, it is manifest that university 
teachers of subjects which have any bearing upon political 
thought must feel themselves debarred from even thinking 
freely. The whole influence of the universities is there- 
fore harnessed to the chariot of government, and used 
for impregnating the national mind with the conceptions 
which the government approves. Now in all countries 
the universities must exercise a profound influence upon 
national thought, since they train the teachers of the 
schools, the lawyers, the publicists and writers on political 
subjects. In Germany the prestige and ascendancy of 
universities has long been greater than in any other 
country : the Germans are the most docile and the most 
bookish of peoples, and there exists among them scarcely 
anything of that healthy, half-humorous contempt for 
professors which is to be found in other countries. In 
controlling the universities, therefore, the German govern- 
ment controlled the most powerful influence upon the 
nation's mind. 

Over the lower grades of education the influence of the 
Prussian government was yet more marked. The whole 
system was brought under a far more direct and centralised 
State control than has ever been the case in Britain. Like 
everything else under the direction of the Prussian bureau- 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 189 

cracy, the work was very efficiently done. The system was 
scientifically planned, so as to give to every class just the 
kind and degree of learning which it needed in order that it 
might play its allotted part in the life of the nation. It 
was thus far from being, in any real sense, a democratic 
system ; because its aim was not so much to develop all 
individual capacity so that it might be employed on what- 
ever work suited it best, as to train classes as such, and so 
to emphasise the distinctions between them. The results 
were certainly remarkable, and contributed immensely to 
the nation's progress. To the boys of the middle class, 
especially, the system succeeded in imparting an astonishing 
volume of organised knowledge ; and the German boy of 
eighteen is a mere paragon in comparison with his British 
compeer. It may fairly be said that his individuality 
was apt to be lost beneath these masses of imposed 
knowledge. But there is no denying that he was, and is, 
far more adequately equipped with the kind of knowledge 
which will enable him to play his part efficiently as 
an obedient instrument in the great organised army of a 
conquering nation. But the most striking aspect of the 
German school-system was the use which was made of it 
to impregnate the national mind with a set of political 
ideas and preconceptions favourable to the Prussian 
theory of government. The curriculum, more especially 
in history (to which far more attention was devoted than 
in British schools) has been systematically used to glorify 
the Hohenzollern dynasty, to justify its methods, to preach 
the inherent superiority of the Teutonic race over all others, 
and the divine destiny of Germany to become the leader of 
the world. In the schools, even more directly than in the 
universities, the teachers were made to feel that their 
prospects depended largely upon their success in creating 



190 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

among their pupils the attitude of mind which the Prussian 
government desired. None but the most resolutely inde- 
pendent minds can resist the influence of such pressure, 
steadily exercised during the moulding years of youth. 

To these influences must be added that wielded by the 
military system, under whose control the whole manhood 
of the nation came, directly or indirectly, between the 
ages of twenty and forty. The habit of discipline, of sub- 
ordination and submission to the officer-caste, and of 
accepting the idea of utter devotion to the monarch to 
whom every soldier must swear personal allegiance, com- 
pleted and enforced the docility of mind already trained in 
the schools. The whole German military system is based 
upon the ideas of autocracy and caste supremacy ; unlike 
the French system, which is democratic in its character. 
It is not easy to imagine any mode in which submission to 
the existing order, and the universal acceptance of the 
ideals by which it was guided, could be more potently 
assured than the German system of military service. And 
its political value formed one of the reasons why throughout 
the period the German government persisted in periodi- 
cally increasing the number of men under arms in pro- 
portion to the increase of population, despite the fact 
that Germany needed no accession of military strength to 
secure her from attack. The rule was that not less than 
one per cent, of the population must always be in military 
training ; and the reason for this rule was quite as much 
political as military. 

Over literature and the newspaper press government 
naturally could not exercise so direct a control as it could 
wield over the schools and the army. But imaginative 
literature always echoes and reflects the mind of the people 
which creates it, and if that mind is materialised and en- 



&IVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 191 

slaved, literature will become sterile. The imaginative 
literature of Germany since the middle of the nineteenth 
century has been very abundant, but it has been singularly 
lacking in originality and inspiration. None of the great 
writers who have influenced the thought of Europe have 
come from Germany during the last half -century. And 
this is because their work has no universal appeal, since 
it has reflected the vulgar materialism, the national self- 
complacency, and the worship of mere brute power, which 
have dominated the German mind since the great military 
triumphs of Bismarck, and which have been fostered and 
strengthened by the whole State-system, and by the philo- 
sophy which it embodies. As for the newspaper press, the 
German government was acute enough to recognise that 
direct censorship of the rigid kind practised during the 
early nineteenth century was no longer tolerable or prac- 
ticable, except in time of war. Bismarck, indeed, did not 
hesitate to suppress newspapers from time to time, and 
prosecutions for lese-majeste have been abundant. But 
on the whole a wide latitude in the expression of opinion 
has been allowed ; the great safeguard being that the 
nation had been trained not to listen seriously to opinions 
which the government held to be dangerous. Besides, 
variety of opinion could do no harm so long as it was kept 
within strait limits. An orchestra which plays in strict 
unison produces no very powerful effect. Better that the 
various instruments should play different and character- 
istic notes, so long as the main theme could be kept pre- 
dominant, and the clashing notes kept in harmony by the 
baton of the conductor. Bismarck invented, and his 
successors have very efficiently developed, a far more 
subtle and skilful method of influencing public opinion than 
that of direct control. It has consisted in the lavish 



192 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

expenditure of State funds upon the management of the 
press at home and abroad ; and the supply, under govern- 
ment supervision, of a cheap and full service of news, in 
which the facts are dexterously handled, by emphasis or 
suppression, so as to create the kind of impression desired. 
It is not necessary to falsify the facts ; it is enough to edit 
them, to select and arrange them. And without endeav- 
ouring to dictate the ordinary policy of a newspaper, a 
government which gives thought to such matters can 
generally secure the insertion of articles or of persistent 
little paragraphs expressing a particular point of view, or 
can by an appeal to patriotism secure the suppression of 
inconvenient facts, or the support of a particular policy ; 
the obstinate newspaper can always be punished by the 
withholding of government advertisements or other such 
means. These were the methods by which the German 
government learnt to mould the opinion of the nation, 
already rendered docile by the instruction of the schools 
and the discipline of the army. This is what Bismarck 
called ' the mobilisation of public opinion,' and regarded 
as a process almost as important for victory as the 
mobilisation of armies. It constitutes an interference 
with freedom of thought and the free movement of opinion 
far more dangerous than the most rigid censorship. But 
it was very efficient ; and it brought the result that, 
according to an important German publicist, ' there is no 
public opinion in Germany : public opinion is an orchestra 
which answers only to the baton of government.' 

Such was the working of the German sj^stem, a system 
of military and bureaucratic autocracy, veiled by repre- 
sentative institutions, using these institutions as a means 
of feeling the pulse of national opinion, employing every 
device to organise and bring under government direction 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 193 

all the material resources of the nation, and to guide and 
direct the movement of public thought ; but wielding 
all the power thus won for the purpose of realising aims 
which the nation had no share in defining. It was the 
most scientific and efficient system which the world had 
ever seen. It made the nation prosperous, united, and 
terribly strong, and turned it into a formidable engine of 
war, the wielders of which might well feel that world- 
supremacy was within their reach. But, as events have 
terribly demonstrated, it poisoned the nation's very soul. 
And what shall it profit a nation if it gain the whole 
world, and lose its own soul ? 

In startling contrast with the demonstration of the 
German system which these years afforded was the 
demonstration afforded in Russia of the working of a 
different kind of autocratic government ; an autocracy 
unveiled by even the semblance of a representative 
system, served by a bureaucracy which was not even 
efficient, and having as its aim not the subtle indoctrina- 
tion of a whole people's mind with its own ideas, but the 
mere prohibition of all independent criticism or discussion 
of national policy. This was autocracy in its most sterile 
and destructive form, which actually encourages in- 
efficiency and backwardness because the efficient and the 
progressive are tempted to think for themselves. The 
one healthy feature in the political life of Russia during 
this period was to be found in the work of the Zemstva 
or County Councils, and the Municipal Councils of the 
towns, which had been instituted in the 'sixties. They 
were carrying on useful labours of education, sanitation, 
and local government, in which their members were 
acquiring a real political capacity. But the numbers of 
those who had a share in such work, and in the political 



194 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

training which it gave, were very limited ; they were 
regarded with deep distrust by the governing bureaucracy, 
which lost no opportunity of checking their work, or 
whittling away their modest powers. When the bureau- 
cratic system broke down and showed its shameful in- 
competence and corruption in dealing with famines 
during the 'nineties, the Zemstva alone saved the situa- 
tion, and made it clear that Russia was by no means 
lacking in men of public spirit and administrative capa- 
city. But this demonstration only increased the jealousy 
and hostility of the ruling bureaucracy. Instead of 
developing and making the most of these promising 
beginnings, the ruling elements in Russia continued to 
discourage and repress them. The period was, in short, 
one of mere stupid reactionism. It reaped its natural 
fruit in the fostering of secret conspiracy and aimless 
violence, which reached its height with the murder of 
the Tsar Alexander n. in 1881 ; and the excesses of 
Nihilism provided further excuses for violent repres- 
sion, conducted with a disregard of every principle of 
justice. Under such a system opposition is certain to 
be driven to extremes, to adopt visionary ideas, and to 
become destructive rather than constructive. The best 
brains of the nation, excluded from participation in 
useful public activities, deprived of all political experi- 
ence, and driven back upon themselves, gave ready 
harbourage to the most fantastic projects. No great 
nation could remain for long content with a system so 
perverse, so corrupt, so inefficient and so radically unjust 
as that by which Russia was governed. She was drifting 
towards revolution ; and it seemed to be the deliberate 
plan of her governing class that the revolution, when it 
came, should be robbed of sane and rational leadership. 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 195 

What added to the danger was that during this period 
Russia began, for the first time, to be seriously affected 
by the industrial revolution. The rapid growth, in some 
of her large towns, of an industrial proletariate, brought 
with it new problems, with which her corrupt and incom- 
petent government was quite incapable of dealing. This 
new element, drawn from among the illiterate peasantry, 
and for the most part quite ignorant and totally unversed 
in political problems, understood nothing but its own 
wretchedness, and formed a ready prey for the crudest 
doctrines of revolutionary Socialism. 

Autocracy in Germany could claim that it made for 
national strength and prosperity. Autocracy in Russia 
could not even put forward that claim. Yet when we 
compare the ultimate effects of the two forms of autocracy 
upon the peoples who were subject to them, and upon 
the fortunes of civilisation, it may be doubted whether the 
deeper reprobation must fall to the Russian system. It 
was shamelessly unjust. Yet its injustice was of a kind 
which aroused indignation and sympathy with its victims, 
and therefore stimulated rather than deadened the desire 
for justice among its subjects. The German system 
administered with meticulous exactitude a well-devised 
system of law, which was just to those who accepted its 
political ideas, but ruthless to those who repudiated 
them ; its very efficiency helped to lull to sleep the 
consciences of its subjects in all those matters which did 
not affect their personal or national interests, stifled the 
spirit of justice among them, and prepared them to 
applaud the most hideous disregard of right that history 
records. The Russian system endeavoured to forbid all 
expression of opinion upon political subjects, and all free 
political action ; and it consequently drove into extra va- 



196 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

gance and unreality much of the political opposition 
which it aroused. But it did not, and it could not, 
repress the free movement of the Russian mind, which 
expressed itself in a literature of imaginative insight, 
idealism, and spiritual sincerity which gave a fresh in- 
spiration to human thinking. The German system did 
not suppress the surface manifestations of political 
thought or political action ; it went to their roots, it im- 
pregnated them with its own spirit, and it won for the 
ugliest ideas of political and moral materialism an absolute 
and desolating ascendancy over most of the guiding 
minds of the nation, with the result that the influence 
of German thought upon the civilised world has for a 
generation been either null or poisonous in the moral and 
political spheres. The very stupidity and inefficiency of 
the Russian system, while it brought many woes, saved 
the nation from the worst result of subjection, the en- 
slaving of its mind to a false and destructive ideal. The 
very efficiency and purposefulness of the German system 
was undoing the German nation, by blinding it to the 
fundamental distinction between right and wrong : the 
ruin was none the less real because it came dressed out 
in an alluring vesture of worldly success. ' All these 
things and more also,' wealth, trade, military success, 
perhaps world dominion, ' will I give unto thee if thou 
fall down and worship me ' ; and the German nation 
was so trained that it fell down and worshipped, instead 
of crying, ' Get thee behind me, Satan.' 

From the two great autocracies of Europe we may next 
turn to examine the working during this period of the 
two greatest European democracies, those of France and 
Britain. Both were, as democracies, of recent establish- 
ment. Both, but especially that of France, were very 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 197 

severely tested by the strain of the period, by its im- 
perial adventures, its burden of armaments, its growing 
social unrest. In neither country did the parliamentary 
system arouse among its subjects such whole-hearted and 
unqualified approbation as the German system evoked 
in large elements of the German nation. In France the 
system was indeed only slowly establishing itself. It 
was the object of unceasing criticism even from its sup- 
porters, and of bitter opposition from more than one 
side. In Britain the self-complacency of the previous 
age, which we have seen echoed by Mill and Bagehot, 
was rapidly diminishing. In the judgment of many 
well-qualified observers, the system was beginning to 
break down, and the increasing dominance and rigidity 
of party divisions aroused a growing discontent. Yet 
there were but few citizens of either country who would 
have consented to exchange their method of government, 
with all its defects, for the German system, which was so 
strikingly demonstrating its practical efficiency ; while, 
on the other hand, there was in Germany an increasing 
proportion of the population, represented by the Radical 
and Socialist parties, who were anxious to cut at the 
roots of the German system by adopting the central 
feature of the British and French system, and bringing 
under the control of the representative body the un- 
checked authority of the Crown and its administrative 
bureaucracy. This contrast is highly instructive and 
suggestive. It indicates in advance the conclusion to 
which a more detailed analysis will bring us : the con- 
clusion that while democracy could not compare with 
autocracy in the definiteness and the simplicity of the 
national aim which it set before itself, and therefore in 
the efficiency with which it pursued its aim, there was 



198 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

something in the spirit of the democratic system which 
outweighed all the practical deficiencies of its early de- 
velopment, and which caused it to appeal to the idealism 
of its citizens in a way that could never be equalled by 
the deadly efficiency of autocracy pursuing the purely 
material end of mere ascendancy. 

In France the period may be defined as one of constant 
struggle for the system of parliamentary Republicanism. 
The Monarchist parties, who had been in the majority 
in the Assembly of 1871, had, as we have seen, on\y 
consented to the establishment of the Republican system 
because they could not agree among themselves. They 
had postponed its formal enactment as long as they 
could (1875). Even after it had come into being, though 
henceforward outnumbered, they long remained numer- 
ous, and restless in their opposition. They retained hope 
of a victory so long as the Royalist Macmahon retained 
the presidential chair ; even after his resignation, in 
1879, they continued active. Perhaps the moment of 
final Republican victory may be fixed in 1883, when it 
was adopted as a principle of the constitution that ' The 
Republican form of government cannot be made the 
subject of a proposal for revision.' The effect of this 
was that while the Chamber or the Senate might, under 
the constitution, propose constitutional changes, they 
were henceforth forbidden to propose the introduction of 
monarchical institutions. That could not now be put 
forward in a constitutional manner, but only by a violent 
revolution. Yet even now the agitation against the 
Republican and parliamentary system did not cease. It 
formed the strength of the Boulangist movement (1887- 
89). Boulanger was an empty and pretentious general, 
who won some popularity by his good looks and by his 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 199 

insistence upon the need of concentrating all the strength 
of France upon the obtaining of revenge from Germany. 
He demanded a revision of the constitution, and a return 
to something like the system of Napoleon in. for the 
sake of military efficiency. But he was in reality only 
the puppet of the forces of reaction, and his fall in 1889 
was a great victory for Republicanism. Again, there is 
some reason for supposing that the same forces were at 
work in the miserable Dreyfus affair (1897-1900), wherein 
the professional jealousies of army chiefs, resentful of 
popular control, were strengthened by anti-Semitic feeling 
in denying justice to a cruelly maltreated Jewish officer. 
The combination of the best elements in the Republic, in 
1899, to clear up this mess, and to stamp out the intrigues 
and secret influences which were at work in the direction 
of the army, was another and definitive victory for the 
parliamentary and Republican cause. 

In the Dreyfus affair, in the Boulangist struggle, and 
in all the reactionary movements of the time, the strength 
of the party of reaction was mainly drawn from the 
Church. Hence the struggle for the security of the Re- 
publican system largely resolved itself into a conflict with 
the Church ; and this conflict filled the period with which 
we are concerned, and lasted on into the next period. 
Le clericalisme, voila Vennemi, said Gambetta, the most 
vigorous of the Republican leaders during the early part 
of the period ; and this became the accepted doctrine of 
strict Republicans. It was mainly over the control of 
education that the conflict raged, since it was the influence 
which the Church could exercise through the schools upon 
the mind of young France which formed its greatest 
strength. And as educational work was mainly carried 
on by religious ' congregations ' or orders, such as that 



200 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

of the Jesuits, it was against these orders that the attack 
of the Republicans was primarily directed. The wise 
Pope Leo xni. did his best to ease the strain : in 1885 
he issued an Encyclical calling upon Catholics to recognise 
French political institutions ; and in 1892 he followed 
this up by a definite command to the French Catholics 
to abandon all attempts at political domination, and to 
rally to democracy, ' since the civil power, upon every 
theory, comes from God.' But this wise guidance was 
ill-obeyed, and had only a temporary effect. Before very 
long French churchmen were lending themselves to an 
ugly campaign against Jews, Protestants, and infidels ; 
the movement, encouraged by a spurious patriotism 
which called itself ' Nationalism,' was supported by the 
army chiefs. The conviction of Dreyfus was one of the 
outcomes of this movement ; and it was what lay behind 
it which gave the Dreyfus case its profound political 
significance, and turned it into a crisis in the history of 
the Republic : a struggle between Republicanism and its 
enemies, and also between liberty and intolerance. 

The prolonged conflict with the Church was in many 
ways a very unhappy thing for France. The hostility to 
clericalism was easily represented as, and sometimes 
developed into, a hostility to religion. It therefore en- 
couraged some of the unhappiest tendencies of French 
life. It alienated from the government and excluded 
from effective participation in politics some of the most 
valuable elements in the community. It contributed to 
the disorganisation of the parliamentary system, helped to 
make ministries weak and fluctuating, and distracted their 
attention unduly from many urgent and difficult problems. 
Yet the struggle was inevitable, though it sometimes 
assumed unpleasant and needlessly acrimonious forms. 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 201 

Nor was it only from the side of the reactionaries and 
their ecclesiastical supporters that the system of the 
parliamentary Republic and the ideal of democratic co- 
operation in government were threatened. These years 
saw the birth and early development of the political 
Socialist movement in France, which, as a serious factor in 
politics, may be said to date from 1882. From the first 
the French Socialists split into numerous sections. Some, 
influenced by the revolutionary tradition, advocated mere 
violence, unceasing war against the existing order, and 
abstention from all dealings with the parliamentary 
system : they would have nothing to do with democracy 
until democracy had adopted their ideas, and until the 
kingdom of heaven had been taken by violence and the 
social revolution accomplished. Others, who came to be 
known as the Possibilistes, adopted the more rational line 
of trying to use Parliament for the gradual embodiment 
of their ideas. They became, in effect, the extreme left 
wing of Radicalism. But even these declined to pledge 
their support to any government, or to allow their members 
to accept any office of responsibility. Hence the Socialists 
in Parliament, and still more the non-parliamentary 
Socialists, formed an element of standing hostility to the 
existing order ; and the violences of the anarchist groups, 
who were generally regarded as the extreme wing of 
Socialism, such as the murder of President Carnot in 1894, 
widened the gulf. The Socialists, however, though (as in 
other countries) they claimed to be the sole spokesmen of 
the people, commanded but a small proportion of the 
votes cast by universal suffrage. And as the period went 
on, their impracticability diminished. They steadily sup- 
ported the Republican cause against the Boulangists, the 
Clericals, and the Militarists. And when, in 1899, the 



202 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet was formed, by a coalition of 
all the Republican groups, to guide the State through the 
Dreyfus crisis, one leading Socialist, M. Millerand, accepted 
office. He was the first Socialist member of the govern- 
ment of any European State. His acceptance of office 
split the French Socialist party. It aroused a storm of 
controversy in the International, where the Germans, 
themselves hopelessly excluded from any share of political 
power, loudly proclaimed the poisonous sourness of all 
governmental grapes. But it marked the beginning of a 
great change, which was to make it possible for leading 
Socialists, like Briand and Viviani, to play a great part in 
the political life of the nation during the next era. Thus, 
by 1900, not only had the reactionary enemies of parlia- 
mentary government been definitely routed, but the 
obstinate refusal of extreme democrats to take part in the 
effective direction of national affairs had begun to break 
down. 

The greatest difficulty of a democratic system is the 
difficulty of obtaining loyal co-operation in the working 
of the system among groups of widely diverse points of 
view, and to persuade these groups to abstain from the 
methods of mere wrecking, while leaving them full freedom 
of thought, speech, and action. France's long tradition of 
revolutionary upheavals and coups d'etat, and the multi- 
tude of divergent schools of thought which her history had 
produced, made this difficulty greater in her case than in 
the case of any other state. The success with which she 
attained this end during the long and difficult contro- 
versies of this period was a real triumph for democracy. 
The constantly recurrent crises of these years make, on 
the surface, a poor comparison with the firm order and 
methodical progress of the German system. But when we 



&IVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 203 

are tempted to draw such a contrast, let us remember that 
France was striving to attain, and was largely attaining, a 
much more difficult and a much more valuable thing than 
that at which the German system aimed. She was trying, 
not, like Russia, to suppress the divergent movements 
which naturally and healthily arise in a great nation, and 
not, like Germany, to tame them or emasculate them, but 
to bring them into the habit of discussion and co-operation 
for the common good. Voluntary co-operation is a much 
finer thing than enforced obedience ; but it is much more 
difficult to ensure. In the incessant controversies of this 
period France was slowly learning this lesson. And if she 
sacrificed something of efficiency, something of her strength 
and of her immediate and external unity, in the struggle, 
the sacrifice was worth while. 

Unhappily, the acrimonious controversies of this period, 
and the numerous factions into which the political world 
was divided, concealed in some degree the real progress 
that was being made, and weakened men's confidence in 
parliamentary institutions. Ministries were short-lived 
and embarrassed. The constantly changing procession 
of politicians who passed into and out of high office be- 
wildered the onlooker : there were very few dominant 
personalities who could appeal to the public imagination 
as the representatives of great principles. The business 
of bargaining and intrigue which necessarily accompanied 
every change of ministry under a multiple -party system 
seemed sordid and insincere. The notion grew that poli- 
ticians as a class were corrupt self-seekers. It was en- 
couraged and fomented by the acid criticisms of those 
elements in the State which had declared hostility to the 
existing order, the reactionaries on the one hand, the more 
extreme Socialists on the other. And it was not without 



204 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

some justification ; for in a system of shifting cliques and 
groups corruption finds an easy access. There was a 
succession of rather unsavoury political scandals. Thus, 
in 1887, President Grevy was compelled to resign because 
some of his entourage were guilty of dealing corruptly 
with the Legion of Honour ; the Panama scandals, when a 
number of deputies were found to have been bribed by the 
Panama Company, aroused a still deeper distrust ; and 
there were other unpleasant episodes of a similar character. 
In the eyes of solid, industrious France, unhabituated to 
the discussions and controversies of representative govern- 
ment, politics as pursued in Paris were apt to seem a rather 
shady mystery. That is not the spirit which creates full 
confidence in government. 

Yet, although it must be recognised that there was 
some foundation for the uneasiness about the working of 
the parliamentary system which marked the period, there 
was no real ground for pessimism. This harassed and 
troubled system of government succeeded in carrying out 
a remarkable amount of good work. It revived and en- 
couraged French agriculture, giving great attention to its 
scientific problems, encouraging co-operation among the 
peasantry, and providing them with working capital for 
the development of their industry. Not even Germany 
surpassed the activity of Republican France in the study 
and development of agricultural science. Though handi- 
capped by the lack of coal, it did much for the develop- 
ment of industry. It made new railways, great roads, 
and a magnificent system of canals, superior even to that 
of Germany. Above all, it brought into being an admir- 
able system of national education, modelled largely on 
that of Germany, but in many essential respects superior 
to it. The French democracy was to be an educated 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 205 

democracy. And once that was secured, as it was by a 
long series of enactments during the 'eighties and 'nineties, 
the ultimate health and vigour of French society was 
ensured, provided that the very existence of the State 
could be safeguarded against the dread peril which, as 
every Frenchman knew, for ever threatened it on the 
eastern border. Thus, although the system of the parlia- 
mentary Republic inspired no such unqualified satisfac- 
tion in any quarter as the German autocracy inspired in 
large sections of the German people, it was making for 
unity, peace, and orderly development, and rendering 
possible the free co-operation of all the diverse elements 
of a great people, under the influence of a free movement 
of thought. Under its aegis France was regaining much 
of that intellectual and spiritual leadership of Europe 
which she had for a time lost under the deadening influence 
of the Napoleonic regime ; while Germany had sacrificed 
the ' kingdom of the air ' to seize the material dominion 
of the earth, and her spirit, once the spirit of freedom 
and truth, was being stifled and poisoned by the malaria 
of materialist doctrine. When the grim twentieth cen- 
tury opened, which was to put all beliefs and all nations 
to a dreadful test, France had not indeed fully overcome 
her internal difficulties, or solved her domestic problems. 
But she was in the way to solve them ; they no longer 
threatened her with mere anarchy. Only from without 
was the growth of ordered freedom menaced by the ever- 
looming spectre of a brutal war of destruction. 

In Britain the period showed little external change, 
but the beginnings of a profound change in spirit. On 
the one hand there was an advance in the democratisa- 
tion of the machinery of government. But this was not 
followed, at once, by any very direct participation of 



206 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

the mass of the people in the conduct of affairs. On the 
contrary, there was a great revival of the power and 
influence of the old ruling elements in the State, the 
causes of which are deserving of analysis : the dominant 
Liberalism of the preceding period gave place to the 
equally dominant Conservatism and Imperialism of the 
years 1878-1900. The period saw a great extension of 
the sphere of government, and of its interferences in the 
daily life of the people, and a consequence of this was a 
rapid, but as yet almost unperceived, growth of the power 
of bureaucracy. At the same time the ineffable com- 
placency with the parliamentary system which had been 
expressed by Mill and Bagehot began to give place to a 
vague dissatisfaction, the source of which may be perhaps 
mainly traced to the growing rigidity of party organisa- 
tion, and to the growing sense, fostered by the endless 
and time-devouring controversies over Ireland which 
filled the period, that parliamentary discussion was largely 
a futile waste of time. It was becoming apparent that a 
good deal of recasting would be necessary in the British 
system. And although the recently enfranchised de- 
mocracy was as yet for the most part quiescent, there 
were signs that it was waking up, that it was tempted 
to use its supreme power, and that some elements in it 
were beginning to be influenced by the ideas and methods 
of Marxian Social Democracy as it was working on the 
continent of Europe. 

In two ways the democratisation of the machinery of 
government was carried further in Britain during these 
years. The Reform Act of 1884 enfranchised the agri- 
cultural labourer, and went near to (though it did not 
attain) the establishment of manhood suffrage. Incom- 
plete as it was, and many as were the anomalies still left 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 207 

in the British franchise, this Act may be said to represent 
the first step in the British advance towards complete 
democracy which was dictated by pure theory, and not 
by practical considerations. For there was no effective 
demand for the agricultural franchise ; still more note- 
worthy, the enfranchised of 1884, unlike their predecessors 
of 1867, had not demonstrated their capacity for self- 
government by spontaneous co-operative activities on 
their own account. Lacking political experience, they 
were apt to go like sheep to the poll, and to use the vote 
without very clearly understanding what it meant. The 
introduction of this new mass of voters was, beyond 
doubt, part of the reason for the Conservative reaction 
which began at the next election, and lasted till 1906. 

More immediately important than the Parliamentary 
Reform Act was the reconstruction of local government 
which was achieved during the period. In 1888, the 
establishment of County Councils for the first time pro- 
vided the rural districts with elected representative 
bodies, and the political authority of the Justices of the 
Peace, drawn from among the landed gentry, practically 
came to an end. The new bodies were, indeed, naturally 
and healthily, dominated by the same class. But they 
now held their power by election, not by prescription. At 
the same time, the vast metropolitan area of London was, 
for the first time, endowed with a single controlling body, 
elected by popular vote. It showed in its first years so 
much of the enthusiasm of the new broom, and so great 
a readiness to embark upon the paths of municipal 
socialism, as perturbed its Conservative creators. But it 
is characteristic of British political development that an 
era superficially characterised by political reaction should 
have produced so valuable an enlargement of local self- 



208 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

government. Finally, in 1894 the machinery of repre- 
sentative local government was further expanded by the 
establishment of District and Parish Councils. This was 
an attempt to revivify the once vigorous co-operative 
activities of the rural districts. It has produced, as yet, 
very little result, because the social conditions of the rural 
areas were not such as to encourage any great activity. 
But the machinery is there, ready to work as soon as the 
power is created which can drive it forward. 

These may be described as the last acts of the purely 
political reconstruction which had been carried out in 
Britain during the nineteenth century. It had placed 
the control of public affairs, central and local, in the 
hands of democracy, if democracy chose to use it. But 
as yet democracy seemed indifferent ; and throughout 
these years it was content to leave power in the hands of 
the landowning class, and of the bulk of the capitalist 
controllers of industry and commerce, who had now 
joined forces with them. It was rewarded in two ways : 
first, by an unparalleled extension of the dominions of 
the British Empire, especially in Africa, and by the rise 
of a new spirit of pride in the imperial achievement of 
the race ; secondly, by the beginning of a new policy of 
social reconstruction with the Employers' Liability Act 
and the unfulfilled promise of a scheme of Old Age 
Pensions, modelled on that of Germany. On the whole 
it was well pleased with these boons, until the South 
African War, which came as the culmination of the 
imperialist period, brought about a great revulsion of 
feeling. But until then the dominance of the Conser- 
vatives, and of the ideas for which they stood, seemed 
unshakable. Nothing proved this more clearly than the 
renewed strength and courage of the House of Lords, the 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 209 

one great undemocratic element in the British system, 
and the stronghold of the old ruling interest of land, and 
the new ruling interest of industrial capital. In the 
previous period the House of Lords had been, as a rule, 
shrinking and timid in its resistance to changes which its 
members disliked. In 1884-85 the part they had played 
in hampering the passage of the Reform Act had led to 
an agitation for the abolition or reconstruction of this 
aristocratic survival, and it had seemed as if the Liberals 
were about to proceed to the final democratisation of the 
parliamentary system. But the tepidness of the public 
response to this agitation showed that the Conservative 
reaction was already strong ; and in the following years 
the Lords showed a boldness in action such as they had 
never exhibited in the preceding period. During the 
' transient and embarrassed ' Liberal ministry of 1892-95 
they actually rejected almost every important legislative 
proposal sent forward by the majority in the Lower 
House, and the calmness with which the country received 
these Acts showed that it was willing to accept a system 
whereunder, whenever the Liberals had a majority, they 
should be made impotent, while whenever the Con- 
servatives had a majority they could do what they liked. 
There was no serious outcry against this system, until 
in 1907 the House of Lords went so far as to invade the 
Commons' supreme control over finance. Nothing could 
more plainly demonstrate that the country had, at this 
period, no objection to aristocratic leadership, so long as 
it worked reasonably well. 

The root cause of this remarkable reaction, which had 
its parallels in other countries, was to be found in the 
bankruptcy of nineteenth-century Liberalism. Its pro- 
gramme of political liberty, the removal of legally estab- 

o 



2 10 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

lished privileges of class or sect, and the withdrawal of 
all restrictions upon economic competition, which had 
aroused so much enthusiasm in the early part of the 
century, had now become vieux jeu, in part because it 
had been almost completely carried into effect, and the 
benefits which it had to give had been, in Britain at any 
rate, largely reaped ; but in part also because it no longer 
commanded the old belief. On the economic side especi- 
ally, Liberalism, in Britain as in other countries, was handi- 
capped by its alliance with the doctrine of laisser-faire, 
the doctrine of self-help, of the ' free field and no favour 
and devil take the hindmost.' As we have seen, this 
doctrine had enjoyed a greater ascendancy in Britain 
than anywhere else. It had secured the allegiance even 
of the great trade unions, fighting though they were for 
better economic conditions for their members. 

But a change was coming. Just as in other countries 
the movement of Marxian Socialism, and the theory of 
the ' class war ' between the bourgeoisie (who were every- 
where the most active Liberals) and the extruded prole- 
tariate, were winning an increasing strength, so in Britain 
also there began to arise during these years a demand 
that the power of the State should be used to save the 
' hindmost ' from the ' devil.' The Social Democratic 
Federation, which preached the pure milk of the word of 
Marxianism, was founded in 1881 ; the rival but kindred 
Independent Labour Party in 1893. These bodies pro- 
fessed to appeal to the working class ; they never ob- 
tained more than a handful of adherents, because the 
British mind instinctively distrusts such abstract theories 
as they preached ; but their very existence was the sign 
of a new spirit. In 1883 the little group of intellectuals 
who called themselves the Fabian Society began their 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 211 

vast scheme of permeating existing British parties and 
institutions with Socialist (though not with Marxian) 
ideas. But they also had few adherents. More signifi- 
cant was the rise of the New Unionism, which arose out 
of the London Dock Strike of 1887. It was an attempt 
to bring into the trade-union movement not only the 
more prosperous trades of the upper artisan classes, who 
had hitherto been chiefly affected by it, but the un- 
organised mass of unskilled labour. And just because the 
organisation and resources of this class were less able to 
undertake, with much prospect of success, a long struggle 
for better conditions such as the greater resources and 
closer organisation of the engineers and the miners had 
enabled them to carry on, the new unions were led to 
look to political action for the securing of their ends, to 
demand that the power of the State should be exercised 
in their interest, and to think of using their votes to 
secure direct representation in Parliament. Even the 
older and more conservative unions began to be drawn 
towards the new policy. The moment when they were 
brought to contemplate direct political action as a class 
may perhaps be dated from 1890, when the Trade Union 
Congress demanded the legislative enforcement of an 
eight hours' day. And in 1900, at the very close of our 
period, the trade-union organisation joined with the 
earlier Socialist organisations to form a Labour Repre- 
sentation Committee, whose business was to be the 
creation of a specific Labour Party in the House of 
Commons. In all this (apart from the small coteries of 
the S.D.F. and the I.L.P.) there was indeed little of the 
doctrinaire Socialism of the Marxian pattern which was 
represented by the continental Socialist parties. The 
bulk of the trade unionists who joined in this movement 



212 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

were not, indeed, Socialists in the continental sense at 
all. But they had made up their minds that the power 
of the State must be used, not merely to secure that the 
old functions of government should be carried on in 
accordance with the public will, but to obtain a far-reach- 
ing social betterment. The great mass of the nation, 
whether trade unionists or not, remained loyal members 
of the old traditional parties, Liberals or Conservatives, 
and hesitated to follow the lead of these more enter- 
prising innovators. 

But the significant thing is the emergence of a new 
spirit ; and because this new spirit was inconsistent with 
some of the traditional doctrines of Liberalism, Liberalism 
passed for a time under a cloud. On the other hand, the 
Conservatives, who had never fully shared the Liberal 
distrust of any enlargement of State action, were not 
unready to show some sympathy with the new spirit. 
Their social reforms, like the Workmen's Compensation 
Act, did as much to win for them the loyalty of a rapidly 
changing nation as their apparently triumphant imperial 
policy. The reaction of these years, therefore, was by no 
means pure reaction ; it was in a great degree due to the 
fact that an enlarged conception of the functions of the 
State, and the ends of political action, was struggling 
towards its birth. This was in itself a perfectly healthy 
development ; and it is worth noting that in the British 
community (apart from a few knots of theorists) it did 
not assume the form of any declared hostility to the 
existing system, or any proclamation of war to the knife. 

At the same time it is possible to perceive, growing 
during the period, a vague dissatisfaction with the working 
of the parliamentary machine. Partly this was due to the 
fact that a generation which had begun to desire that 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 213 

political power should be employed to effect social changes 
no longer found the old satisfaction in the excitement of 
the political game between the ' ins ' and the ' outs.' But 
in a higher degree it is to be attributed to changes which 
were taking place in Parliament itself, and in the political 
life of the nation. 

In the first place, the parliamentary machine showed 
signs of breaking down. The Irish Home Rule movement 
entered upon an acute stage at the beginning of the period, 
and, without reaching any solution, dominated British 
politics throughout its course. The method adopted by 
the Irish under Parnell's guidance was that of forming 
a distinct party, vowed to abstention from office, to 
permanent opposition, and to the use or abuse of all the 
forms of procedure as a means of making the Irish problem 
a permanent nuisance until it should be solved. This 
meant that the simplicity of the two-party system, on 
which the smooth working of the parliamentary machine 
had depended, was for the first time broken. The Irish 
Nationalists had hitherto been a wing of the Liberal 
party, loosely attached, indeed, but still falling into the 
system. It was now wholly independent. More than 
once it was able to hold the balance between the older 
parties, and to decide the fate of ministries. If it gave 
steady support to the Liberal ministry of 1892-95, this was 
only on condition that Home Rule was steadily kept in the 
forefront ; and the situation thus created made it appear 
that the ministry lay at the mercy of a single group, and 
weakened public confidence in its action. The possibility 
that a single group might thus be able to impose its will 
upon the government of the country pointed to a real 
weakness in the British system. At the same time the 
methods of parliamentary obstruction systematically 



214 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

pursued by the Irish party, the disorderly scenes which 
resulted from it, and the spectacle of members suspended 
from service or locked up in gaol, immensely diminished 
the prestige of the House of Commons. 

It was also becoming apparent that the volume of work 
thrust upon the House of Commons was too great to be 
efficiently performed. Apart from a few great controver- 
sial measures, legislation was hurriedly and inadequately 
discussed ; the control over finance seemed to be in- 
efficiently exercised ; the supervision of administration 
appeared to be little more than a sham, because ministries, 
secure of a standing majority, were nearly always able to 
swamp criticism under the mass of brute votes. So far 
as these criticisms were justified — and they were largely 
justified — they rested upon three facts. In the first place, 
the dislocation of the parliamentary machine, which we 
have already described, wasted an infinity of time, and made 
adequate discussion of many important questions almost 
impossible. The mechanism of Parliament needed revision. 
In the second place, the rapid extension of the sphere of 
government, on which we shall presently have something 
to say, and the steady increase in the power of the bureau- 
cracy which it brought, rendered necessary a closer, in- 
stead of a more spasmodic and distracted, attention to 
the working of the administrative system. 

But the third cause was the most important of all. 
The rigidity of the party machine was increasing with 
alarming rapidity. In part this was due to the influ- 
ence of the Irish, who were organised under an all but 
military discipline ; the other parties, in conflict with 
them, had to tighten their bonds. But the change would 
have come about even if the Irish party had never been 
born. It was due to the establishment of democracy, 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 215 

and the need of high organisation to deal with the 
vast masses of votes. Growing steadily since 1867, this 
elaboration of party machinery reached its culmination 
in the 'eighties, when first the Liberals and then the Con- 
servatives set up central party organisations, supported 
by large subscribed funds, and corresponding with local 
organisations in all the constituencies. The results of this 
were profound and far-reaching. As the central caucuses 
often contributed, directly or indirectly, to the cost of 
contesting local elections, they were able to impose candi- 
dates upon the local organisations. And as a candidate 
had little or no chance of being elected unless he was 
supported by a party-machine, the caucus was able to 
stipulate for his absolute loyalty to the party leaders, 
on the threat of ousting him from his seat if he showed in- 
subordination. Hence the independence of members of 
Parliament was undermined ; and their responsibility was 
in a large degree transferred from their constituents to the 
party organisation. It would not be just to exaggerate 
this process. Members still showed a good deal of inde- 
pendence ; governments still found it necessary to drive 
them with a loose rein ; the caucus did not dare too openly 
to override the opinions of constituencies. But the reins 
were there, and they were handled by the party leaders. 
Another result was yet more perturbing. The party 
funds, which in all parties were secretly administered, had 
to be kept up. Electioneering on a national scale is a very 
expensive business. Men who contributed big sums to the 
party funds expected to be respectfully listened to. They 
did not always contribute purely from enthusiasm for the 
cause ; or, at all events this enthusiasm was reinforced by 
other motives. One of these was the desire for titles and 
honours, which are dispensed by the head of the party in 



216 NATIONAL SELF-GO VERNMENT 

power on behalf of the Crown. Without going so far as to 
say that there was an auction of titles, for this would be 
untrue, we may reasonably say that the claim to a peerage 
of the man who contributed £20,000 to the party funds was 
likely to be favourably considered. Another motive was 
the desire for a ' safe seat ' in Parliament : in constituencies 
where a party possessed an assured majority, the influence 
of the caucus could be used to secure the nomination 
of men who contributed handsomely to the party funds. 
Finally, there was ground for suspecting that large contri- 
butors to the party funds could exercise more than their 
legitimate influence in determining the policy of the party, 
and in securing that one question should be pressed, 
another burked. We need not exaggerate the evils which 
resulted from this system. The traditions of British 
public life were too clean and healthy to make it possible 
that they should be carried to an extreme. But these 
evils existed. The nation was beginning to be vaguely 
conscious of them, and uncomfortable about them. And 
in consequence there was beginning to arise a new current 
of dissatisfaction with the party system, which was apt to 
forget that this system alone rendered practical the smooth 
working of parliamentary government. Yet when all is 
said, the working of the British system was still in the 
main healthy and successful. After all, party caucuses 
exist to further an ideal cause ; and even in the midst of 
the machinery of electioneering they cannot wholly forget 
this. They exist, also, to win the support of the ordinary 
electorate, and they cannot win this support if they try 
by tricks to ensure the victory of a policy in which the 
electorate disbelieves ; they must keep their ears open to 
the movement of public opinion. Hence even through the 
increasing rigidity of party organisation, the national 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 217 

mind, so far as its views were formulated, was able to 
control in all essentials the direction of the national 
government. 

Yet another factor tending to weaken the influence of 
parliament was the growing influence of the platform and 
the Press. We have seen that during the preceding 
period statesmen had begun by platform pronouncements 
to go behind parliament and to appeal directly for 
national support. This practice grew very rapidly during 
the period with which we are concerned. It became the 
custom that many of the most important pronouncements 
of political leaders should be made, not in Parliament, 
where they could be discussed, but before large meetings 
of supporters, and, through the Press, to the whole 
electorate. The leaders on the other side replied in the 
same way ; and thus the great debate on national policy 
was transferred in a large degree from Parliament to the 
platform. This had its valuable side, in forwarding the 
political education of the people. But it also had its 
defects ; and one of these was a steady undermining of 
the influence of Parliament. What made this great 
change possible was the remarkable expansion of the 
cheap newspaper press, which was brought about by the 
diffusion of popular education. Now a newspaper is a 
costly thing. It requires a very great capital. And the 
wielders of this capital exercised very great power. Most 
of the newspapers were identified with one or other of the 
great political parties, and their proprietors could exercise 
a considerable influence upon the policy of their party. 
It inevitably became an object of party tactics to obtain 
control over this great newspaper or that ; and in this 
process the party which controlled most wealth was 
naturally most successful. But the newspaper press, 



218 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

dependent for its circulation upon the mass of readers, 
must above all things avoid dulness. Detailed reports of 
parliamentary proceedings are apt to form dull reading. 
Hence, while the big public speeches of the leaders 
obtained full publicity, not only the routine course of 
public business, but the expressions of opinion of men 
whose names were not widely known, and whose views 
did not serve a party cause, were apt to be kept in the 
background. Here, again, it is necessary to beware of 
the temptation to exaggerate. The British Press was 
governed, on the whole, by a fine tradition of fair play, 
from which only the baser papers were tempted to 
depart, and in this period the baser papers had not yet 
achieved the largest circulations. Moreover, if financial 
power exercised a dangerous influence over the newspaper 
press, at least there was in Britain no sign as yet of the 
use of the inexhaustible funds of the nation, or of the 
power of government, to doctor the expression of public 
opinion in the manner practised in Germany. And, 
finally, the British electorate showed itself to be unex- 
pectedly capable of forming an independent judgment, 
whatever the newspapers might say : time and again it 
gave its decision in the teeth of an almost unanimous 
journalistic chorus. But when all is said, the power of 
the Press formed one of the problems of democracy ; nor 
have we yet discovered how to ensure that in the forma- 
tion of that public opinion by which every democratic 
society must ultimately be guided, every sane and healthy 
element shall have free play, and the influence of secret 
forces shall be kept in check. The problem has become 
the greater now that the unceasing argument about 
national policy is carried on by newspapers which no 
longer pay that attention to parliamentary discussion 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 219 

which once distinguished the British press. Not the 
least striking result of this development has been its 
reaction upon the character of parliamentary discussion, 
which has taken on a certain unreality. Too many 
members, finding themselves debarred from independent 
action by the rigidity of party control, and aware that 
the serious discussion of political issues in the House will 
not win for them the public attention it would formerly 
have won, are tempted to speak and act in the way which 
seems most likely to please the newspapers, and win 
their notice. And this, in its turn, contributes in the 
long run to the undermining of the prestige of Parliament. 
While the influence of Parliament was, for all these 
reasons, slowly declining, the power of bureaucracy in 
the British system was growing very rapidly, though as 
yet it was almost unperceived. The increasing magnitude 
and complexity of the functions of government in a 
modern State made this inevitable. A Foreign Office 
which had to deal not only with the affairs of high 
diplomacy among the leading States, but with the acute 
commercial rivalry of all the nations in all parts of the 
world ; a Colonial Office which was responsible for the 
administration of vast undeveloped territories newly 
acquired in Africa and other backward regions ; an 
Admiralty which was responsible for the enormous and 
complicated mechanism of a modern fleet ; a War Office 
which must concern itself with the defence of an empire 
scattered over all parts of the world, as well as with the 
possibilities of European complications : such vast enter- 
prises could no longer be effectively directed by amateurs, 
or adequately supervised by a Parliament already dis- 
tracted by a vast mass of multifarious business, and 
mainly engrossed by party controversies. And if this 



220 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

was true of the old departments of State, it was still more 
true of the new departments brought into existence by 
the ever-growing needs of a highly developed society. 
The supervision of industry, under the terms of a whole 
code of Factory Acts ; the development of a system of 
national education ; the administration of a vast and 
growing concern like the Post Office ; the encouragement 
and regulation of the multifarious activities of the local 
authorities : all these were complex concerns which de- 
manded expert knowledge and direction, such as could 
only be supplied by an army of highly skilled salaried 
officials. Quite inevitably these officials wielded an in- 
creasing degree of independence. They formed, indeed, 
the real working force of government. They controlled, 
in detail, the carrying out of the laws. They mainly sug- 
gested new laws ; nine out of ten of which (putting aside 
the great controversial party measures) passed through 
Parliament with little discussion, and were suggested by 
the practical needs of administrative work, and drafted in 
the big departments . They even fixed the national expendi- 
ture, since their influence was decisive in determining 
how much should be spent in this department or that. 

The means ci controlling these powerful and valu- 
able public servants which the British system provided 
were three in number. The chief was the presence, 
at the head of each department, of a parliamentary 
politician. But the politician, distracted by the con- 
tinual demands of publie controversy, must be a child 
in the hands of his permanent officials, unless he was a 
man of exceptional force. In the nature of things, nine- 
tenths of the business of his office could never come 
before him for a personal decision. On the other nand, 
bis unqualified responsibility for every act of his depart- 



HIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 221 

merit concealed the real responsibility of the officials. 
And, under the working of the party system, he was 
nearly always able to check any serious attack. The 
second means of controlling the bureaucracy was the 
asking of questions in Parliament. This was, and is, a 
useful device, which keeps the bureaucracy always on 
the alert. But it has been used in a very unsystematic 
and spasmodic way, and the typewritten answers sup- 
plied by the bureaucrats to be read out by their parlia- 
mentary chiefs are not always of a very frank or illumin- 
ating kind. The third means ought to have been more 
effective. It was afforded by the opportunity for dis- 
cussing the work of each department which was given by 
the annual vote for the department. But, in fact, this 
opportunity has never been used for the purpose of 
seriously investigating the working of the department. 
When the Foreign Office vote comes up, a member will 
move the reduction of the Foreign Secretary's salary by 
£100 as an excuse for ventilating his opinions on the 
Balkans or on Persia ; but there is seldom any discussion 
on the actual working of the office-machine. In truth, 
the British system, having been more free from bureau- 
cracy than any other, and having grown up in a period 
when bureaucracy could almost be dispensed with, be- 
cause the functions of government were so simple that 
they could be effectively directed by amateurs, has not 
yet succeeded in bringing bureaucracy under effective 
criticism or control. That was already perceptible during 
the period with which we are concerned, though it was 
largely concealed by the nominal responsibility of the 
political chiefs of departments. It was one of the 
problems of democracy for the future. Though we have 
been slow to recognise it, bureaucracy is an indispensable 



222 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

element in the government of the modern State. But 
its inevitable growth must, in a greater or less degree, 
defeat the ends of self-government unless it is brought 
under effective control, and kept in its place as the 
instrument, not the master, of the national will. And 
although bureaucracy enjoyed, and enjoys, no such un- 
qualified dominion in the British system as falls to it 
in the German system, yet the methods of public control 
must be made more efficient than they have hitherto 
been if the ideal of self-government is to be fully main- 
tained. It does not matter how many people cast votes 
at parliamentary elections, or how often they cast them, 
if in the end their representatives are not capable of 
exercising, or do not exercise, a due control over the 
machinery of government. 

The self-complacency of the previous period regarding 
the perfection of British institutions was thus disappear- 
ing. They were the objects of a growing criticism. They 
were displaying real, though not yet very serious, defects. 
This was mainly due to the special strain which the 
circumstances of the period were imposing upon them. 
The old machinery had to adapt itself to the demands of 
an awakening and as yet only half -instructed democracy. 
That was the main cause of the rigid organisation which 
political parties were forced to assume in order to deal 
with a vast untrained electorate ; that was also a large 
part of the cause of the dangerous powers wielded by the 
newspaper press. Again, the system was now no longer 
able to confine itself to the comparatively simple functions 
of government which were enough for our fathers ; the 
needs and claims of the age were forcing it, half-uncon- 
sciously, to assume great functions of social organisa- 
tion, of education, of economic direction. And this was 



HIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 223 

the main cause of the rapid growth of bureaucratic power 
under the shelter of the old forms. To all this were 
added the assumption of immensely increased responsi- 
bilities of empire in the outer world, and the anxious 
task of dealing with infinitely more complex and menacing 
problems of foreign relations. That the system should 
have been able to adapt itself at all to these trying con- 
ditions, and to maintain its health, was evidence of its 
fundamental soundness, and of the sanity and good sense 
of its citizens. For its defects were superficial, and 
capable of remedy. The machinery of the system, 
though manifestly open to improvement, was such as to 
ensure that a freely formed public opinion could, once it 
was definitely formulated, control the direction of national 
policy. No government, no party, dare directly defy it. 
No supreme power restricted or tampered with the right 
of all honest bodies of opinion to exercise what influence 
they could upon the national mind. No government 
could survive if it lost the support of the representative 
body ; and the representative body, though it did not 
and could not reflect every shade of opinion in the nation, 
could not resist any definite and strongly held conviction 
of a majority of the nation. If highly organised parties 
were able sometimes to cozen the electorate, that was 
only because the electorate lacked clear views. If bureau- 
cracy was winning great power, the main principles upon 
which it acted were under the control of Parliament and 
through it of the nation, and were checked and re- 
strained by the criticism of Parliament, and still more 
by the vigorous independence of self-governing local 
bodies and trade organisations, in a degree to which there 
was no parallel in Germany, or indeed in any other State 
save America and the British Dominions. What the 



224 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 1 

dissatisfactions of the period demonstrated was that the 
British system needed further development and improve- 
ment, and perhaps a clearer distribution of the functions 
of government, in order to meet new conditions ; not that 
the system itself was bad. 

Already, before the opening of the twentieth century, 
it had become a common fashion to compare the British 
system unfavourably with the German, at least in regard 
to its efficiency in performing certain important public 
functions. And in some respects the comparison indubit- 
ably told in favour of the German system. The skill and 
method with which the material resources of Germany 
were husbanded and organised for the national advantage 
presented some features which not Britain only but all 
other communities might with advantage imitate. The 
efficiency of the German educational system, on some of 
its sides, deservedly attracted the encomia of educational 
reformers in Britain, and its methods were directly 
imitated, to a large extent, in France, America, and 
other countries. The success of Germany in these two 
spheres, indeed, did more than even her military power 
to win for her the remarkable ascendancy over the mind 
of the civilised world which she possessed at the close of 
the nineteenth century. But there was a reverse side to 
the shield : how black, later events alone have enabled us 
to see. The efficient organisation of the nation's material 
resources placed a very dangerous power in the hands of 
a government that was free from all effective control as 
to the way in which it should wield them. The influence 
over the nation's mind which its efficient educational 
system gave to the government was a yet more dangerous, 
and ultimately a ruinous, power. 

What the lauders of German efficiency, and the critics 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 225 

of other systems, failed to realise was that this efficiency 
was itself in a great degree due to the very irresponsi- 
bility of the German government. It is the bureaucrats, 
or professional administrators, who in practice make the 
working of a system efficient or inefficient ; and given 
that two groups of bureaucrats are equally competent and 
industrious, the group that is least distracted by criticism 
will get the most work done. Compare, from this point of 
view, the lot of the British bureaucrat — in spite of all we 
have said about his growing power — with the lot of the 
German bureaucrat. He has to deal with a self-governing 
people, trained by centuries of habit to an obstinate in- 
sistence on their individual rights. He must meet the some- 
times captious criticisms of innumerable elective bodies 
with large independent powers, and of powerful voluntary 
organisations, which are apt to be very suspicious of him. 
He is exposed to the unceasing fusillade of questions in 
Parliament and letters to the newspapers. He must 
accommodate himself to the point of view of the changing 
political chiefs who preside over his department. They 
are amateurs, but usually very intelligent amateurs. 
They have theories and policies of their own. And they 
have the last word. The German bureaucrat suffers from 
no such vexatious restrictions. He has to deal with the 
most docile of peoples, trained to the obedience of the 
parade ground. The head of his department is always 
a bureaucrat like himself. The Reichstag is a much 
humbler and less inquisitive body than Parliament, and, 
in any case, cannot interfere ; the organs of local govern- 
ment, in so far as they exist, are very much at his mercy. 
If the British official enjoyed the same independence as 
the German official, he would, in some ways, do his work 
better, and he would certainly do it more quickly and 



226 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

easily. Government would be more efficient ; but it would 
also be more masterful, and less considerate of public 
opinion. A certain degree of inefficiency is the almost in- 
evitable product of the practice of self-government, and 
the control of the State service by elected representatives. 
It is the price which self-governing nations have to pay to 
secure that their officials shall be the servants and not the 
masters of the public, and that the policy which they 
pursue shall be a policy whose spirit and aims are dictated 
by the nation. 

And there is yet another thing which those who lauded 
the German system for its efficiency were apt to forget. 
Before we are justified in commending a man or an institu- 
tion as efficient, we must ask, Efficient for what ? It is 
easier to be an efficient burglar than an efficient philan- 
thropist ; and if we were to draw a comparison between a 
burglar and a philanthropist, we should certainly attach 
far more weight to the ends they had in view than to the 
skill and success they displayed in pursuing them. In 
comparing two systems of government the same principle 
applies ; we must continually ask ourselves what are the 
ends pursued, consciously or unconsciously, by each ; and 
we must recognise that efficiency in the pursuit of a 
mean and low aim, and one that can be clearly defined, is 
far easier to attain than efficiency in the pursuit of a lofty 
aim, of an aim that changes and grows as men's hopes 
and beliefs change and grow. 

And here we come to the fundamental contrast between 
the German and the British, the autocratic and the self- 
governing, systems. The German system, in accordance 
with the long-established traditions of Prussia, held before 
itself a perfectly definite end : the extension of Power, the 
creation of a Master-State, which should be able ultimately 
to dominate the world. It conceived it to be its right and 



RIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 227 

duty to organise all the material resources of the nation, 
and to mould and control the nation's mind in order to 
make it a pliant instrument for that supreme purpose, 
towards which all the strength of the nation must be de- 
voted, and before which all other dreams and aspirations 
must give way. It defined national well-being ultimately 
in terms of Power, and of Power alone. And it was ulti- 
mately in view of that supreme end, and not primarily for 
its own sake, that high intellectual development, equally 
with material prosperity and the strength of armies, was 
fostered and cherished. But intellect must not presume 
to claim freedom ; it must not criticise or hamper the 
masters of the State, or introduce elements of discontent 
into the disciplined nation-army that was setting forth to 
achieve the domination of the world. That was a gran- 
diose aim, if a vulgar one ; but it was precise and definite, 
and its clearness made for efficiency. 

The self-governing system aims at something quite 
different, something which is very elusive and hard to 
define ; and just because of this lack of definition efficiency 
in the pursuit of it is difficult to achieve. It aims at the 
well-being of the whole community, and of every element 
in it ; but wherein this well-being ultimately consists, and 
how, amid the constant flux of human affairs, it can best 
be realised, the self-governing principle cannot exactly say. 
Certainly it does not find it in mere Power, which men 
have always pursued, and often attained, but in which 
they have never found satisfaction, but only fresh labour 
and trouble. The conception of human well-being, and 
of the modes of social organisation best suited to realise it, 
undergoes continual change and continual enlargement 
under the influence partly of changing conditions of life, 
partly of growing knowledge, partly of the dreams and 
ideals of great men which gradually wield their influence 



228 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

upon the mind of the community. Not even the wisest 
man can ever be trusted to say just how this vast and 
vague aim can be secured ; for not even the wisest man is 
capable of grasping the whole bewildering miracle of Man, 
his animal desires and his limitless aspirations, his nobility 
and his pettiness, his easily fired enthusiasms and his 
obstinate prejudices, his indestructible desire for justice 
and his insatiable appetite for power. But if we may not 
trust the wisest, still less may we trust a monarch chosen 
by the accident of birth, or any single class, whether 
aristocratic, professional, or proletariat, with its prejudices, 
its shallow theories, its narrowing traditions. How, then, 
shall the enlarging sense of the true nature of human well- 
being, and the true aims of social co-operation, be enabled 
to work itself out without being petrified and sterilised by 
the particular dogmas of any class or sect ? The self- 
governing principle asserts that the most hopeful mode, 
among any people whose habits of mind and training make 
this possible, is to give free play to every movement of 
thought, since all alike contain some element of truth, to 
let this incessant stream of discussion, from all sides at 
once, exercise what influence it can upon the popular 
mind, and to take the resultant body of opinion, with all 
its defects, as on the whole the safest available guide. Let 
every kind of influence, every form of leadership, gain 
what power it honourably can ; let the nation choose its 
own leaders, and express its will, so far as it can be formu- 
lated, through them ; and let this General Will, vague, 
shifting, and variable as it may be, but guided by all the 
most healthy forces of knowledge and wisdom to which 
it is willing to submit, determine the general spirit and 
direction of national policy, retaining and using the 
knowledge of experts and the zeal of reformers, but never 
allowing their professional interest or their one-sided 



KIVAL SYSTEMS IN OPERATION 229 

enthusiasm to obtain an unqualified dominion. The 
rashness of the theorist will be corrected by the stolid 
resistance of custom ; the passionate zeal of the enthusiast 
will be checked by the insistence of established interests 
upon the respect due to their claims. Such, in very 
general terms, is the theory of self-government. Its ideal 
is to put the direction of human affairs, in all societies 
which are linked by such unity of sentiment that mutual 
understanding among them is possible, under the control 
of the Spirit that is for ever moving upon the waters of the 
human sea. For it believes that this Spirit works for 
justice, and has wrought for justice unweariedly ever since 
it guided the first steps of Man out of the mire from which 
he sprang ; and in that sense the principle of self-govern- 
ment asserts that the voice of the people is the voice of 
God. But just because this conception is so indefinite, 
and varies continually in its immediate aims, it is far 
harder to express in a formula than the clear-cut doctrine 
of Power. It has no such definite criterion to determine 
its course of action ; and it cannot hope to achieve the 
same measure of hard efficiency. 

These two opposed theories of government stood in 
sharp contrast at the opening of the twentieth century. 
Never in human history, not even in the days when the 
free States of Greece stood out against the despotism of 
Persia, have the two principles of self-government and 
domination appeared in clearer antithesis. For as the 
spirit of autocracy has never in history obtained a fuller 
command over the minds, bodies, and resources of a 
great people, or been more terribly organised for con- 
quest, than in the Germany of 1900 ; so the spirit of 
self-government has never achieved so complete a mastery 
as it had in the great States of the West, after the long 
and toilsome experiments and struggles of centuries. 



IX 

THE BREWING OF THE STORM, 1900-1914 

The burdened and unrestful peace of 1878-1900 was suc- 
ceeded by a period of wars and alarms of war, of diplo- 
matic crises, of revolutionary upheavals, and, even in 
some of the most orderly and settled States, of embittered 
controversy and outbursts of violence. The pace of the 
current was quickening as it neared the cataract ; the 
dread of what was coming weighed upon all observant 
minds ; the intensity of military preparation increased 
as this dread grew ; and under all this intolerable strain, 
the growth of orderly self-government, so recently estab- 
lished in many States, and burdened with so many 
problems of social reorganisation in all, was hampered by 
greater difficulties than ever. 

It is not our business here to deal with the diplomatic 
and military events of these years. They will be looked 
back upon by future historians as a period of unrelieved 
nightmare, though their horror was unrealised by those 
who lived through them. But without some realisation 
of the nature of the strain we can scarcely form a just 
impression of the ordeal to which the institutions of self- 
government were being subjected, or arrive at a fair 
judgment of its achievements. When the new period 
opened, the South African War was raging ; it nearly led 
to European complications, and it did not end till 1902. 
In 1903 came the Serbian Revolution, with the murder 






THE BREWING OF THE STORM 231 

of the King and Queen ; and at the same time intense 
unrest in Macedonia, the meeting-place of the Balkan 
peoples, showed that trouble was brewing in these vexed 
lands. In 1904-5 the Russo-Japanese War led to the 
confusion of the Russian Revolution, which died down, 
but had by no means attained a solution, by 1907. In 
1905 the first Morocco crisis, deliberately precipitated by 
Germany, nearly brought war among the Western powers. 
In the same year the union of Norway and Sweden was 
broken by a peaceful revolution. In 1908 the Turkish 
Revolution brought the Balkan question to a crisis. It 
gave to Austria the pretext for annexing Bosnia, and this 
brought the danger of a general European war very near 
in 1909. In that year also a revolution in Greece brought 
into power the great statesman Venizelos. In 1910 came 
the war between Italy and Turkey. In 1911 the second 
Morocco crisis, directly due to Germany, again brought 
a general war very near. In 1912 and 1913 came the 
two Balkan wars, which were only a sort of prologue to 
the final catastrophe of 1914. It would be hard to find, 
in any other period of equal duration, so continuous a 
succession of crises and alarms. And meanwhile most of 
the great States, and many of the small, were disturbed 
by outbreaks of violence, general strikes, and attempts 
by minorities to get their way by force. The readiness of 
discontented elements to resort to force, even in the most 
democratic countries, was one of the most perturbing 
features of the period. All these troubles tested the 
capacity of self-governing institutions, and seemed to 
many to herald their approaching breakdown. 

The main cause of these strains and distresses was to 
be found in the state of international politics, in the 
burden and waste of military preparation which deprived 



232 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

governments of the means of dealing with domestic ills, 
and in the atmosphere of discontent and suspicion which 
this state of things engendered. The mass of citizens in 
the self-governing countries were unable to grasp the 
bearing of these events upon their own fortunes ; they 
were inclined to blame their governments for whatever 
was wrong. Their statesmen were too much engrossed 
by their own immediate problems to give to the whole 
situation the attention it deserved ; if they had tried to 
deal with it firmly, they would not have been followed 
by their fellow-citizens ; all they could do was to stave 
off the evil day. But the masters of the great autocratic 
State to whose deliberate action this ugly state of things 
was largely due, had no such troubles. Their subjects 
had been trained to docility. Their policy could be 
pursued in secret. They saw in all this confusion the 
means to forward their own clearly defined and steadfastly 
pursued purpose ; and instead of doing anything to allay 
it, they did their best, at many points and in many ways, 
to stimulate and exacerbate it. 

The minor causes of all this sequence of trouble were 
too manifold and various to be capable of analysis in a 
few sentences. In the Balkans, and among the unhappy 
subject peoples of the Austrian Empire, the spirit of 
nationality was working like yeast ; but what especially 
stimulated it was the dread of the policy of domination 
pursued by Germany and her Austro -Hungarian and 
Turkish tools, and the disturbing influence of their in- 
trigues. In Russia the trouble was the natural harvest 
of a long period of corrupt and oppressive government. 
But in Russia and elsewhere the demand for the sudden 
establishment of complete democracy, among a people 
quite untrained for political responsibility, raised hopes 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 233 

too visionary to be realisable, and thus produced con- 
fusion and deepened unrest. In all countries the rapid 
development of scientific industry, and the growing power 
of massed capital, produced a swift growth of working- 
class organisations, modelled on the trade unions of 
Britain ; but lacking the long training of the British 
trade-union leaders, their inspirers were often wildly un- 
practical and unbalanced. Among these groups the 
doctrines of Marxianism, often in its crudest and most 
noxious forms, were spread abroad by the influence of the 
International Socialist Congresses, and encouraged the 
notion that a brute war of classes would enable the 
Kingdom of Heaven to be suddenly taken by storm : 
internecine war in every State was to take the place of 
that national co-operation which is the ideal of self- 
government. The mere spectacle of all the great States 
armed to the teeth, and lavishing their money and their 
intellectual resources upon the heaping up of ever more 
formidable implements of destruction, persuaded unre- 
flecting men that their affairs were in the hands of fools 
or knaves, and undermined their confidence in their 
governments ; it also strengthened the materialist view 
(which is the core of Marxianism, as of Prussianism) that 
in the last resort brute force, not justice, rules the world ; 
and it led men (and women too) to lose patience with the 
tedious discussions of the self-governing system, and 
tempted them to resort to violence. And to all this must 
be added the fever and friction which were the aftermath 
of the fierce rush for extra-European possessions. 

These factors would in any case have made this a very 
troublous time. But behind and above them all, the 
chief cause of unrest (though few perceived it) was the 
growing menace of German ambition. Having brought 



234 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

its organisation to the highest pitch of efficiency, the 
formidable autocracy of Germany was in these years, as 
we can now see, definitely contemplating and preparing 
for the realisation of that supreme end for which its whole 
system was devised, the extension of its Power by force. 
The intolerable competition of armaments, which formed 
the chief cause of all the strain, was, as we have seen, 
directly due to Germany. It became far more intense 
during these years, just because Germany was preparing 
for the final stroke. To her other preparations she added 
vast projects of naval construction ; and the culmination 
of this unresting preparation was the series of Army Acts 
in 1911, 1912 and 1913, which were the immediate prelude 
to the Great War. At the same time her spies and secret 
agents were spread abroad by the thousand in every 
country of the world ; and while her General Staff was 
maturing its plans for a sudden onslaught on peace- 
desiring powers, her Secret Service was equally assiduous 
in laying plans for influencing the minds of all nations, 
and for turning to account every element of discontent 
in other countries. We know now how her agents had 
entered into underground relations with the most diverse 
and inconsistent elements, with Sinn Feiners and Ulster- 
men in Ireland, with Clericals and Socialist extremists in 
Italy and France, with Ukrainians and Finns, with re- 
actionaries and revolutionaries in Russia or among the 
exiled Russians in Switzerland, with dissatisfied Boers 
in South Africa, with seditious groups in India, with the 
anti-British parties in Egypt. In every country every 
source of discord was stirred and troubled, so that Ger- 
many might gain. The great diplomatic crises of the 
period were nearly all of her making ; the Morocco crises 
of 1905 and 1911 were to be used as a means of alienating 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 235 

France and Britain ; Germany was the hand in the glove 
of Austria in the Bosnian crisis of 1908-9 ; it was her 
influence which destroyed any chance that the Young 
Turk movement might be a source of progress, and 
turned it into a source of mischief ; her influence ruined 
the Balkan League, which might have made peace in 
that unrestful region. Everywhere her busy agents were 
at work, helping to intensify the confusion out of which 
she hoped to profit. All these things may seem, on the 
surface, to have little to do with the growth of self- 
government. They have everything to do with it. Self- 
government could not work under such a strain. Its 
existence was not safe while this condition of things 
lasted. If the world was to be ' safe for democracy,' it 
must be made impossible for any power to act in this 
way. That was the lesson of the period. With all its 
horrors, the war came as a relief to the believers in self- 
government. At last the issues were plain. Full national 
co-operation (though under the artificial conditions which 
war renders necessary) became possible again. The air 
was cleared, and it became apparent that whatever the 
immediate pretext of the war, its mightiest issue was this : 
that the world must be made safe for self-government. 

Nearly all the governments of the world realised the 
evil of this state of things, though they did not always 
clearly trace it to its source. They all wished to diminish 
armaments ; the flat refusal of Germany made that im- 
possible. They were all anxious to increase the safe- 
guards for peace and to remove mutual suspicions. This 
desire found expression in the conclusion of a multitude 
of arbitration treaties, 1 and at the Congress of The Hague 

1 This movement is more fully described in Nationalism and Inter- 
nationalism, pp. 182-90. 



236 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENtf 

(1907) the powers tried to make the system effective and 
universal. Germany, while loudly claiming to be the 
friend of peace, stood aloof from and scoffed at the move- 
ment, and her opposition at The Hague prevented any- 
thing effective from being achieved. The warrior-state 
was not going to tie her own hands ; but she was glad to 
see her rivals occupying themselves with the mirage of 
organised peace. 

With the pacifist movement of the period as a whole 
we are not here concerned. But there is one aspect of it 
which deserves our attention : the part played in it by 
the Marxian-Socialist groups of all countries in their 
international congresses ; because this had a direct bear- 
ing upon the working of self-government in the individual 
states. The desire of the Socialists for peace (which was 
no stronger than that of other men) actually took forms 
which weakened the power of all the democratic govern- 
ments, to the advantage of Germany, while it did no sort 
of harm to Germany herself. 

The Marxian doctrine was that war between States was 
to be brought to an end by the homoeopathic remedy of a 
universal class war, in which the ' proletarians of all 
lands,' repudiating the outworn shibboleths of patriotism, 
were to unite against capitalism. A series of International 
Socialist Congresses, at Stuttgart in 1907, at Copenhagen 
in 1910, at Basle in 1912, declared that capitalism was 
the sole cause of militarism, of imperialism, and therefore 
of war ; and that it was the duty of the workers in all 
lands, immediately war threatened, to attack their 
' capitalist ' governments, and to render them powerless 
for offence or defence by means of a general strike or 
otherwise, without asking whether they were the aggres- 
sors or not, and without being deflected by patriotic 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 237 

sentiment, merely on the assumption that all govern- 
ments, however democratic, were equally ' capitalist,' 
and equally responsible for the outbreak of any war. 
This pitiful nonsense was, of course, based upon a total 
misreading of history : for while capitalism, as a powerful 
factor in States, is of very modern growth, wars have been 
waged by aggressive governments throughout the course 
of history, and they have been less frequent in the 
capitalist period than ever before. Again it simply dis- 
regarded the facts of the existing situation, refusing to 
inquire who was responsible for beginning the competi- 
tion of armaments and the formation of threatening 
alliances, and whether, once it was begun, the other 
powers had any alternative but to follow, in self-defence. 
Finally, it drew no distinction at all between govern- 
ments which were subject to the control of democracy, 
and governments which were not. The International's 
recipe for stopping war might have worked, in theory, 
if the Socialist groups of the International pattern had 
commanded majorities in every country, and were able 
and willing to use their power. They were everywhere 
small minorities, except in Germany. And in Germany 
they not only had not the power to act ; they had not 
the will. 

The part played by the German Socialists in these 
Congresses was, indeed, very significant. As the most 
numerous and highly organised of all the Socialist parties, 
and as the countrymen of the Apostle Marx, their influence 
was preponderant ; the International was almost a German 
organisation. They supported the vague denunciations 
of capital as the cause of war. They loudly proclaimed 
beforehand that should war come, all governments would 
be equally to blame. They encouraged their colleagues 



238 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

from democratic countries in their project of hampering 
their governments in every possible way if war should 
come. But when it came to pledging themselves to 
any definite action in their own State, the most mili- 
tarist in Europe, they could never be pinned down to any 
promise. And their action at home showed that, in fact, 
their government need fear no opposition from them. 
Though they regularly voted against the military budget, 
that was mere ritual, and had no effect. In 1913 they 
departed from this tradition when they voted for the levy 
on capital necessary to meet the enormous charges of the 
Army Act of that year, though no power threatened 
Germany. And on 4th August 1914 the Socialist members 
of the Reichstag voted unanimously in favour of the war- 
credits demanded for the invasion of Belgium. Three 
days earlier, Herr Miiller, one of their number (who was 
later employed as an agent of the German Foreign Office) 
had been sent by motor-car to Paris to urge the French 
Socialists to refuse war-credits to the French government, 
with the implicit promise that the German Socialists 
would follow the same course. 

We need not assume that in pursuing this policy the 
German Socialists were consciously acting as the agents of 
the German government, by endeavouring to stir up dis- 
unity in the States which Germany intended to attack ; 
but, unconsciously if not consciously, they were turning 
the ' International ' into one of the most useful of German 
agencies. It is significant that in Britain and France 
Socialists of the International school (like the small I.L.P. 
group in Britain) were always ready to uphold and justify 
the actions of the German government, while adopting a 
definitely anti-patriotic line of action. The Utopian 
pacifism of such men as Jaures and Sembat was doubtless 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 239 

inspired by a generous idealism. But in presence of the 
terrible menace which loomed over the world, it was hope- 
lessly out of touch with facts. 

There was none of this Utopianism among the German 
Socialists. They had studied too well the teachings of 
Marx, that hater of Utopias. They had imbibed from 
him a materialism closely akin to that of their own govern- 
ment. He taught them that war was the rule of life ; and 
if their first interest was, in theory, in the class war, they 
could accept also the idea of an equally endless conflict 
between nations, ultimately soluble, perhaps, only by the 
supremacy of the most ' cultured ' and the strongest. 
1 Peoples who are stationary,' their early prophet Lassalle 
had proclaimed, ' can rightfully be conquered by peoples 
who enjoy a more advanced civilisation.' Whatever the 
International might say, the German Socialists at home 
proclaimed their patriotism. They demanded more 
powerful artillery for the army. They disbelieved in dis- 
armament : ' It is absolutely inconceivable,' said their 
greatest leader, Bebel, ' that the rival military States 
should come to an agreement regarding disarmament.' 
In short, German Socialism had been so effectively tamed 
that, while it was ready to encourage in other countries 
the pacifist and anti-patriotic campaign of the Inter- 
national, at home it was not anti-patriotic, or anti- 
imperialist, or even, in the last resort, anti-militarist. The 
anticipation that German Socialism would prevent the 
outbreak of war was always an illusion as baseless as the 
belief that the Kaiser was a bulwark of peace. The sole 
effect of the pacifist campaign of International Socialism, 
under German leadership, was to increase the difficulties 
of the self-governing States, and to hamper them in pre- 
paring to ward off the coming peril. It did not in any way 



240 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

weaken, but rather helped, the designs of the German 
autocracy, which was forcing catastrophe upon the world. 

It would need volumes to describe and analyse all the 
far-reaching political movements and changes which 
filled the years preceding the Great War. All of them 
tended to enlarge the range and power of democratic self- 
government ; some of them displayed, in a perturbing 
way, its dangers and defects, especially in countries whose 
citizens lacked training in political responsibility ; most 
of them illustrated the evil effects of the intense inter- 
national strain of these years. We have only space to 
touch upon a few aspects of this confused and stirring 
period which help to throw light upon the problems of self- 
government. Both in the selection of the topics which we 
shall dwell upon, and in our treatment of them, we must 
be hampered by the consciousness that the events are still 
too near to us, and the passions which they aroused still 
too intense, to allow us to pretend that we can take a 
perfectly balanced and impartial view of them. Yet they 
cannot be passed over without notice. They were too 
important in themselves, and they gave too clear a demon- 
stration of the dangers to self-government which result 
from an unhealthy condition of international relations, to 
be disregarded. 

If our study of the growth of self-government in the 
western world has shown us anything, it is that the 
fortunes of self-government are bound up with the fortunes 
of nationalism, since it is only in communities unified by 
national feeling that genuine self-government is possible. 
The experience of 1900-14 made this lesson clearer than 
ever ; it emphasised also the fact which we have so often 
noted, that some degree of education and political ex- 
perience in the community is necessary for the successful 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 241 

working of national self-government. But it brought out 
also, what had earlier never been so clear, that the healthy 
development of national self-government is equally de- 
pendent upon the existence of a stable international order, 
and upon the possibility of conjuring the constant dread 
of war. It showed, finally, that since European civilisa- 
tion had now achieved the domination of the world, a 
stable international order could no longer be attained by 
an adjustment among the European nations alone, but 
must embrace the whole globe. Only by the establish- 
ment of a ' world-order ' could the world be made ' safe 
for democracy ' ; only so could the ideals of national 
freedom and self-government, which had become parts 
of the system of western civilisation, be effectively 
realised. Thus all the great problems which we have 
attempted to survey in the present volume and in its 
companions, 1 were knotted together in the tangle which 
the Great War was to give the world an opportunity of 
unravelling. This is the point of view which must guide 
us in our selection of facts for analysis. 

The Serbian Revolution of 1903 is instructive as dis- 
playing the essential connection of the democratic and 
the national ideas, and as illustrating in a peculiarly 
poignant way the reaction of the European system upon 
the internal development of individual States. Serbia 
had a very democratic constitution. But it was necessary 
for the ambitions of Austria and of Germany that she 
should be kept in a state of dependence. Under the 
wastrel King Milan and his son Alexander this was 
achieved by means of court influence ; these princes were 
in effect Austrian agents in their own country. But the 
Radical, which was also the Nationalist, party was in- 

1 Nationalism and Internationalism and The Expansion of Europe. 

Q 



242 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

evitably anti-Austrian ; because the bulk of the Serbian 
race were subjects of the Austrian Empire, and cruelly 
oppressed. The democratic system of Serbia would have 
given the upper hand to the Radical and Nationalist party. 
Therefore, in 1893-94, the young king Alexander carried 
out a coup d'etat, abolishing by his own fiat the demo- 
cratic constitution, and reconstituting it to suit his own 
views ; and he followed this with a wholesale proscrip- 
tion of the Radicals. This was the main cause of the 
ugly palace -revolution of 1903, when the young king and 
his wife were murdered by a band of officers, and the 
exiled royal house of Karageorgevitch was restored. It 
was a horrible episode ; the more civilised countries of 
the West afford few parallels to it since the sixteenth 
century. But Serbia, after five centuries of Turkish 
tyranny, was no more advanced than the France of the 
Guises, or the England of Henry vm. The real import- 
ance of the episode was that the democratic system was 
restored. And the democratic system brought the hos- 
tility of Austria and, behind her, of Germany, whose 
projects could not tolerate the existence of a free Serbia. 
A tariff war was followed by the Austrian annexation (in 
defiance of treaty agreements) of the province of Bosnia, 
peopled by Serbs, and hemming in Serbia on the west. 
From that moment Serbia was doomed, unless Europe 
could succeed in protecting her. Democracy in Serbia 
could not be ' safe ' while the Austrian Empire continued 
to include a mass of discontented subjects of Serb race 
who envied the freedom of their brothers over the border, 
or while a free Serbia formed a barrier to the Austro- 
German projects in the east. Democracy could be ' safe ' 
only when national freedom was assured, and when the 
ruthless ambitions of conquering autocracies had been 
permanently and effectively restrained. 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 243 

In the Austrian Empire itself the events of the period 
also illustrated the unreality and the unsatisfactoriness 
of a system of self-government in a community where its 
working is not aided by the existence of a strongly realised 
sentiment of national unity. The system of 1867, which 
we described in an earlier chapter, 1 had never worked 
well in either half of the dual monarchy. In the Austrian 
half the ineradicable antipathies of the component 
peoples had, in fact, made parliamentary government 
impossible. In theory the ministry was responsible to 
Parliament ; in practice no ministry had ever been re- 
sponsible to Parliament, because there had never been a 
ministry which could command a majority in Parliament. 
Ministries, therefore, were made by the Crown, and often 
consisted largely of officials and mere imperial nominees ; 
once and again the Crown was able to plead that govern- 
ment in association with Parliament was in practice im- 
possible, and had in effect dispensed with its aid. It 
was only by bribing the Poles by the cession of autonomy 
in Galicia, and a free hand to tyrannise over the Ruthenes 
of that province, that a working majority was obtain- 
able ; and even then, complete deadlocks were frequent. 
Various schemes of electoral reform were carried, notably 
in 1883 and in 1896, in the hope that they might produce 
more workable Parliaments. Finally, in 1907, universal 
suffrage was established for the Austrian half of the 
monarchy — the constituencies being gerrymandered so as 
to secure to the Germans a much larger proportion of 
seats than their numbers deserved. The theory of this 
reform was that the enfranchised democracy would dis- 
regard national antipathies, and concentrate its attention 
upon economic demands. But this expectation was not 

1 Chap. vii. 



244 National self-government 

justified by the event ; the parliamentary system in 
Austria remained a failure ; the hostility of the under- 
races, Czechs and Slovenes, towards the dominant Germans, 
made the transaction of business almost impossible ; and 
government continued to be carried on largely without 
parliamentary concurrence or control. The malign and 
dangerous policy which Austria has pursued since 1907, 
under German influence, has been the policy of a govern- 
ment which in theory was responsible to a democratically 
elected Parliament ; but it has been a policy hateful to 
the majority of the electors, and aimed at the destruction 
of some of their dearest hopes. Democracy cannot be 
' safe,' it cannot in reality exist at all, except in associa- 
tion with national freedom. In the Hungarian half of 
the dual monarchy there was no substantial political 
change during the period ; the hard tyranny of the 
Magyar minority over their subjects of other races con- 
tinued to be exercised under parliamentary forms. In- 
deed, it became worse ; so that Western Europe, once full 
of admiration for the Magyars, began to be awakened to 
the iniquities from which Rumans, Slovaks, Croats, and 
Serbs had to suffer. There was no amending them, short 
of the freeing of the subject peoples. And the fear of 
this made the Magyars ready to risk everything to main- 
tain their ascendancy, and turned them into the willing 
allies of Germany. The parliamentary system as it was 
worked in Hungary was a denial of the most fundamental 
idea of self-government, the co-operation of the whole 
community, through its freely chosen representatives, in 
the control of its own destinies. And therefore it was 
the foe, not the friend, of peace or of liberty. 

The most dramatic and impressive event of this eventful 
period was the outbreak of revolution in Russia as a 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 245 

result of the failures of the Russo-Japanese War. After 
promising for a moment to endow Russia with a parlia- 
mentary system almost as liberal as those of the Western 
nations, it left her with a mere shadow and mockery of a 
Parliament. Yet it brought her into line with the rest 
of Europe ; it gave her at least the beginnings of repre- 
sentative self-government. 

Russia, as we have seen, had long been ripe for revolu- 
tion ; no civilised people could permanently submit to 
such a parody of justice as her corrupt and incompetent 
autocracy presented. But its worst crime was that it 
had denied to its subjects the means of preparing them- 
selves for freedom. The mass of the Russian people, 
peasants and town-dwellers alike, were illiterate, and 
incapable of criticising or analysing the ideas offered to 
them. With the exception of the mere handful who had 
shared in the admirable labours of the Zemstva and 
Municipal Councils, they were equally devoid of political 
experience. Worst of all, they had been denied the 
fundamental boon of a just and impartial system of law, 
such as can train a people in self-restraint, in respect for 
mutual rights, and in the habit of pursuing their aims by 
law-abiding methods. Yet the political ideas of the West 
were at work among this people. Her ' intellectuals ' of 
the professional classes discussed the political theories of 
advanced democracy, and for the most part held it to be 
possible to introduce them at once without preparation. 
Among the ' proletariat ' of the towns, and in a less 
degree among some of the peasantry, the ideas of Marxian 
Socialism, in their crudest form, untempered by criticism, 
had already got some hold ; in no country have the 
sweeping catchwords of Marxianism been less qualified 
by practical knowledge of affairs. There seemed every 



246 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

reason to expect that when revolution came in Russia it 
would assume the most extravagant and destructive 
forms. What was worst of all was that the fierce re- 
pression of government and its dependence upon brute 
force had cultivated among its opponents a belief in the 
value of violence. For a long time assassination had 
appeared to the extremist schools a justifiable weapon ; 
and so far as exiled Russians had taken part in the inter- 
national movement of democracy, they had been associ- 
ated rather with Anarchism than with any practical or 
constructive creed. 

When the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War 
(February 1904) displayed, even in its first events, the 
shameful incompetence and corruption of the tyrannical 
bureaucracy, the first overt expression of revolt was the 
murder of Plehve, the minister most directly associated 
with the hideous police tyranny which was the worst of 
Russia's ills. This persuaded the government to attempt 
a more moderate regime which gave some freedom to 
discussion. The earliest demand for reforms came from 
the Zemstva (October 1904). Their demands were extra- 
ordinarily moderate. They asked for the rudimentary 
civil liberties — freedom from punishment without legal 
trial, freedom of speech and publication ; but on the 
political side they demanded no more than an extension 
of the functions and of the franchise of the Zemstva 
themselves . All this had been promised forty years before ; 
if it had been granted then, Russia would have been 
ready to make an orderly advance towards self-govern- 
ment. Now these palliatives would have been of no 
effect ; and even as it was, the government at first refused 
to grant them. 

But presently (November) the professional classes began 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 247 

to demand more sweeping reforms ; meetings of doctors, 
lawyers, teachers, university professors put forward 
claims to representative institutions like those of the 
West. Their demand was for a Parliament with full 
control over the executive, and elected by universal 
suffrage. This became the programme of the Russian 
Liberals, who presently organised themselves into a party 
under the name of Constitutional Democrats, or Cadets. 
The demand for the sudden introduction of universal 
suffrage among an illiterate and politically inexperienced 
populace, spread over the vast spaces of the Russian 
Empire, showed that its advocates had paid little atten- 
tion to the history of self-government. The memory of 
the 1848 revolution in France might have taught them 
the danger of such a plunge. 

But these were the moderates. Presently the work- 
people of the towns joined in the agitation. Their first 
demands were for higher wages and better conditions of 
labour, but they added to these the full political pro- 
gramme of the professional associations ; and before long 
had improved even upon these by demanding the election 
of a Constituent Assembly, with power to create an 
entirely new system of government. 

In January 1905 a vast orderly procession of work- 
people to present both economic and political demands 
to the Tsar was brutally fired upon by the police and the 
troops, whose loyalty had not yet been shaken. The 
news of the massacre spread like wildfire over Russia, and 
set the heather on fire. Strikes broke out in the towns ; 
railway traffic was dislocated ; in the rural districts 
bands of peasants marched to burn the barns of their 
landlords, and to seize their lands for themselves ; every- 
where there were murders of police, who, to distract the 



248 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

vengeance of the mobs, turned them against the Jews in 
organised pogroms. Russia seemed to be lapsing into 
utter anarchy ; and meanwhile, in the East, defeat 
followed defeat, on sea and land. 

The government had to give way. The Tsar issued 
one manifesto after another, first vaguely promising to 
invite ' worthy elected persons ' to co-operate in making 
laws, then drafting a scheme for an ineffective legislative 
body with very limited powers. But the revolution had 
gone too far for such palliatives. In October 1905 a 
general strike was declared. It was extraordinarily well 
observed, not only by workpeople, but by doctors, 
teachers, bankers, business firms. The life of Russia 
stopped dead for the moment ; and there was nothing 
for it but surrender. On October 30 a final manifesto 
promised that the Duma should be elected on a demo- 
cratic suffrage, that the ' civil liberties ' should be at 
once established, and that the new assembly when it met 
should have full legislative powers, and control over 
governmental officials. The victory seemed to be won. 
Russia had become a self-governing country. 

But the turmoil was not to be so easily cured. When 
the Duma met (May 1906) it consisted, of course, like 
the French National Assembly of 1789, almost wholly of 
men who had had no political experience, but were full 
of sweeping theories. The doctrinaire Liberals, or Cadets, 
controlled a clear majority ; and not content to secure 
and to bring into working order the very considerable 
powers they had already won, they devoted their strength 
to extending these powers in accordance with their 
theories. At the same time the public disorders which 
had resulted from the revolution underwent little diminu- 
tion. The disorganisation of all productive activity and 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 249 

the prevalence of turmoil alarmed moderate-minded men, 
and gave to the older forces of government, which were 
as yet by no means subjugated, some justification for 
asserting that the weakening of executive power was 
ruining the country. 

The war had meanwhile ended ; and the return of the 
troops increased the government's confidence. The first 
Duma was suddenly dissolved. An appeal by a group 
of its members to the nation to refuse taxes met with little 
support. The government had the upper hand, and the 
attempt of a wing of Socialists to set up a reign of terror 
was firmly crushed. But happily the direction of Russian 
policy was now in the hands of an able and honest Con- 
servative, Stolypin, whose policy was, while repressing 
revolution, to guarantee the ' civil rights,' and to work if 
possible with a modified Duma which should be allowed 
powers of criticism, but not of control. Such an arrange- 
ment, if combined with a frank enlargement of the powers 
of the Zemstva, would have afforded a useful transition, 
allowed the revolutionary ferment to subside, and given to 
the Russian people the opportunity of acquiring political 
experience, and of testing in the light of this experience 
the validity of the sweeping theories and catchwords 
which had obtained dominion over their minds. Stolypin, 
in short, was an advocate of something like the German 
system, which represents a stage in political develop- 
ment through which all the self-governing nations have 
passed. 

The Cadets and the peasants, sobered by experience, 
were now willing to go more quietly. But the bureau- 
cracy, thinking that victory was in its hands, placed many 
obstacles in Stolypin's path. In March 1907 a second 
Duma met. Every means was used to influence the 



250 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

elections ; yet a large majority was returned for the 
popular parties. But the assembly contained few men 
of experience or ability. The Socialist parties made extra- 
vagant proposals ; the little group of reactionaries seized 
every opportunity of provocation, and every means of 
discrediting the new body. At Court the reactionaries 
were eager to crush the parliamentary system once for all 
by an act of force. Thanks to Stolypin, this extreme 
course was not adopted. But on the pretext that the 
extremists of the Socialist groups were fundamentally 
disloyal to the State, the second Duma also was dis- 
solved, after a session of three months. A manifesto 
from the Tsar announced that it had not been really 
representative of the wishes of the nation, and that a 
new electoral system would therefore be devised by the 
Tsar himself who had granted the Duma, and who re- 
mained responsible to God for the government of the State. 
The new electoral law was devised for the purpose of 
producing a moderate and submissive assembly. It aimed 
at securing the preponderance of the rural elements, and 
among them of the largest landowners. The system thus 
established remained substantially the governing system of 
Russia until the revolution of 1917. It gave to the Duma 
no sort of control over the government, though its consent 
was required for legislation. It left these limited powers, 
in practice, in the hands of a small class. Yet it did at 
least endow Russia with a representative assembly ; and 
if its members were chiefly drawn from a single class, this 
class included those who had most practical experience of 
politics. If the Russian government could have persuaded 
itself to work cordially with this body, and to be guided 
by its judgment, a steady progress would have been 
possible, and the need for the revolution of 1917 might 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 251 

have been averted. But the ruling bureaucracy retained 
all its old jealousy of interference or criticism. 

Had time been given by Fate for the development of 
the modest institutions of freedom thus established, it 
would have been a happy thing for Russia and the world. 
But the strain and pressure of the European situation 
denied this. And the heritage of bitterness which the 
revolution had left gave opportunities for the influence 
of German intrigues. The governing bureaucracy, itself 
largely drawn from among the German nobility of the 
Baltic provinces, and always by tradition German in 
sympathy, looked upon Germany as the main bulwark of 
autocracy in Europe. The projects of German ambition 
were so directly hostile to Russian aims and even to the 
security of the Russian Empire, that Russia was inevitably 
driven to take the anti-German side in the crises that 
succeeded one another during the following years ; inevi- 
tably compelled to face the possibility of war, and to pre- 
pare for it. But for all that, there remained powerful pro- 
German elements in the ruling bureaucracy. And as this 
bureaucracy was profoundly corrupt, Germany could 
always count upon the assistance of her paid agents in 
hampering the resistance to her armies ; she was always 
accurately informed as to the actions and proposals of the 
Russian government ; and when the time for her destined 
stroke should come, she could count upon being served 
by traitors high in the Russian service. 

The bureaucracy's jealousy of control was one of the 
obstacles in the way of the steady development of self- 
government in Russia. The other was the extravagance 
of the extremists in the Socialist groups, who, penetrated 
with the doctrines of Marxianism, would be content with 
nothing short of the utter overthrow of ' capitalism,' and 



252 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

the destruction of the existing order of society. Upon 
these fanatics also Germany was able to play : partly 
indirectly, through the influence of the International ; 
partly by more direct means, by actual subsidies, by 
relations with exiles such as Lenin, who had taken refuge 
in Switzerland, and who was to play so useful a part, from 
the German point of view, in the revolution of 1 9 1 7. Thus 
the two elements hostile to the orderly development of a 
system of national self-government in Russia, the extreme 
reactionaries and the extreme revolutionaries, could be, 
and were, alike made use of in the interests of the great 
German project. The European situation was disastrous 
to the political development of Russia. Self-government 
in Russia could not be made ' safe ' until the menace of a 
conquering militarist autocracy should be conjured away. 

On the Turkish revolution of 1908 it is not necessary 
to say much. When the Young Turk Committee of 
Order and Progress succeeded in overthrowing the blood- 
stained tyrant Abdul Hamid, and proceeded to set up a 
parliamentary system, imitated from Western models, in 
which all the conflicting races of the Turkish Empire were 
to be represented, and to be taught to co-operate for the 
common good, observers in the Western lands were full 
of enthusiasm : this seemed to be the greatest and the 
noblest of all the victories of the self-governing principle. 
It had also the incidental advantage that it seemed likely 
to undermine or destroy the preponderant influence which 
Germany had secured at the court of Abdul Hamid, and 
whose possible results were beginning to be a serious 
cause of perturbation among those who were not wholly 
blind to the vast projects which Germany was pursuing. 

But the illusion was short-lived. Under the most 
favourable circumstances, parliamentary government 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 253 

could not work among peoples so profoundly divided by 
race and religion, so deeply dissevered by the memories 
of centuries of oppression and bloodshed ; all the more 
since nearly the whole of these populations were illiterate, 
none of them had received any training in self-govern- 
ment, and none of them had known for many centuries 
even the rudiments of the Reign of Law, or acquired the 
habit of trusting to anything save brute force or cunning 
for their own protection. It soon became apparent that 
the Turkish Parliament was merely the cover not even 
for the ascendancy of a ruling race, as in Hungary, but 
for the dominance of a small self-seeking clique of 
westernised, demoralised and unscrupulous adventurers, 
among whom Enver and Talaat were the cleverest and 
the most active. They were perfectly corrupt, and ready 
to be bought. Moreover, what they knew of soldiering 
they had learnt from German teachers. It was easy for 
Germany to establish over them an influence still greater 
than that which she had wielded over Abdul Hamid. 
For when all is said, that ruse old tyrant was a Turk, 
deeply mistrustful of all the advances of the West, how- 
ever ready he might be to make use of them ; and he 
had the traditional loyalty of his Turkish subjects. But 
his successors were neither good Turks nor good Mahom- 
medans ; they understood the insecurity of their own 
power ; while they talked of Order and Progress, their 
aim was only Dominion and Plunder. They were glad 
to have the support of a great power to keep their dis- 
trustful subjects in subordination. And they were ready 
to lend themselves to vast schemes of aggrandisement 
which fell in with their own limitless dreams of conquest. 
Self-government in the Turkish Empire as a whole, in- 
volving the peaceful co-operation of many embittered 



254 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

and oppressed peoples with the masters who had long 
tyrannised over them, could never be anything but a 
fantasy. Self-government even in the potential national 
units of the empire — Armenia, Anatolia, Syria, Arabia, 
Mesopotamia — could only become possible after a long 
training in the habit of loyal obedience to law, after a 
painful unlearning of the modes of life and action bred 
by centuries of despotism. The Turkish revolution, 
therefore, marked no advance in self-government. It 
only intensified the difficulties of the international situa- 
tion which were straining the system in those countries 
where it was a reality. 

Yet the Turkish revolution was a sign that the ideal 
of political liberty, born in the West, was beginning to 
appeal to the imagination of the East, and to be a 
challenge and an inspiration to peoples among whom, in 
all the centuries of their history, this conception had 
never independently emerged. At the beginning of the 
twentieth century, Europe having conquered the non- 
European world, the ideals of Europe were conquering 
the minds of the non-European peoples. And this was 
in itself a very healthy feature ; none the less healthy 
although, quite naturally, the difficulty of making self- 
government real, and the conditions of its success, were 
seldom realised among its new disciples. In India and 
in Egypt especially the demand for self-governing institu- 
tions grew louder, and the problem of dealing with this 
demand was among the most difficult of the many 
problems which faced the rulers of the British Empire. 
The first instinct of every Briton was to recognise the 
justice of any such demand. Eor nearly a century past 
the most thoughtful among British administrators in 
India had maintained that British rule in that vast land 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 255 

could only justify itself by its success in training the 
Indian peoples to govern themselves ; and in Egypt the 
aim honestly proclaimed when the British occupation 
commenced was that of turning Egypt into a land 
capable of managing its own affairs justly and with self- 
respect. Yet in both countries the conditions were such 
that the sudden introduction of self-government on a 
large scale must have led to anarchy and injustice. In 
both countries the only vocal elements which demanded 
the change were the small group of Western-educated 
men, who had swallowed the formulae of Western politics 
without much considering how they could be adapted to 
the deeply rooted customs and traditions of the East ; 
and these elements broadly represented the old ascendant 
classes. In both countries the mass of the population, 
accustomed through untold centuries to submit to the 
powers above them merely because they were irresistible, 
were illiterate, and devoid of political knowledge and of 
the capacity for sane political judgment ; and were 
therefore likely, under a formal system of self-government, 
simply to relapse into the old submissive acceptance. In 
both countries the essential conditions of self-government 
were only beginning to exist. The habit of regarding 
Law not as the mere edict of power to be placated or 
evaded, but as a common interest to be protected and 
maintained, was being slowly and painfully nursed into 
existence, but was not yet firmly rooted. The sense of 
unity or nationhood was growing, but it was still gravely 
hampered by deep differences of race and language, and 
by antipathies of caste and creed ; these differences were 
indeed minimised by common subjection to a firmly 
administered system of equal law, wielded by a power 
which stood aloof from them all, but they were not 



256 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

subdued, and they would break out into the old acerbity 
if this power abdicated its functions. Finally the peoples 
of both India and Egypt were lacking in that essential 
training for national self-government which is afforded 
by the practice of self-government on a lesser scale. 

The time had come for an advance ; but the advance 
could only be gradual. Some advance was made during 
these years. It is possible that it might safely have been 
made more rapid. On the other hand, the dangers of a too 
rapid advance, in the conditions existing in these lands, 
were manifestly great. Naturally the advances that were 
made seemed totally inadequate to theorists who had 
swallowed whole the democratic doctrine of the West, and 
who believed that the millennium could be brought about 
by the sudden and universal diffusion of the right of mark- 
ing crosses on ballot-papers. Unrest, taking too often the 
form of conspiracies of violence, as in Russia, was a feature 
of these years both in India and in Egypt. It had its 
healthy side ; it showed that a divine discontent was 
stirring even in the immobile East. But it added to the 
difficulties and perplexities which surmounted the growth 
of self-government during these critical years. 

Even in the lands where the system of national self- 
government was most solidly established, this period was 
one of strain and difficulty. In all the self-governing 
countries of Europe, but most notably in Britain, France, 
and Italy, the acrid criticism of the parliamentary system, 
and the widespread dissatisfaction with its working, which 
we have seen arising in the preceding period, grew in 
strength. In many circles it had become almost a 
commonplace to say that ' parliamentarism ' and party 
government had proved themselves failures. This pessi- 
mism contrasted markedly with the ineffable complacency 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 257 

with which the Germans had learnt to regard their system ; 
and it is necessary to examine its sources with honesty and 
care. 

One broad fact must impress us at the outset of any such 
analysis. The countries in which this dissatisfaction was 
most widely felt and expressed were the countries which 
were most exposed to the dangers of war, and to the 
exasperating and wasteful burden of preparing for it. The 
one State in which there was a widespread satisfaction 
with the existing system — Germany — was the one State 
which was organised primarily with a view to war ; the 
countries in which dissatisfaction was widespread were the 
countries whose system contemplated a normal state of 
peace, and for whom the cost and strain of endless pre- 
paration for war formed a maddening distraction from the 
primary aims they had set before themselves. Thus the 
international situation, which was mainly due to German 
policy, was placing the gravest difficulties in the way of 
the satisfactory working of self-governing institutions. It 
was making the world ' unsafe for democracy.' 

The criticism of parliamentary government mainly 
came, in all the liberal countries, from two opposite 
sources. On the one hand, the classes which had formerly 
enjoyed political supremacy, and which had been allowed 
to retain it in effect during the early stages of the develop- 
ment of democracy, were alarmed by the growing political 
activity of the masses, by the power of their organisations, 
and, especially, by the prevalence of the ugly doctrines of 
class-war. They found it difficult to resign themselves to 
a system of national co-operation in which they would be 
hopelessly outnumbered, especially as democracy was 
widely interpreted in the sense of mere class-ascendancy, 
the ascendancy of the necessarily ignorant masses which 

R 



258 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

even the Radical Mill had regarded with dread. They 
used their immense influence, naturally and in some 
degree healthily, to resist this tendency ; they owned and 
directed a large part of the Press ; they were still able to 
bring great pressure to bear upon the directors of political 
parties. In the eyes of eager reformers, they seemed still 
to possess a complete mastery over the instruments of 
government. But they felt their position insecure ; and 
this insecurity brought forth from their side a great stream 
of criticism of the working of parliamentary institutions. 
By a thousand scribes the world was taught to distrust 
the whole race of ' politicians,' who were represented as a 
crowd of needy and self-seeking office-hunters. There 
was enough truth in this view to make it appear plausible ; 
men are always attracted by the rewards of public office, 
as well as by its opportunities. But this applies in a less 
rather than a greater degree to democratic than to other 
societies ; salary may tempt a man to be false to his 
beliefs yet more potently in a bureaucratic system like the 
German than in a parliamentary system like the British ; 
and the oxen that tread out the people's corn are far more 
effectively muzzled in the Britain of to-day than they 
were in the aristocratic Britain of the eighteenth century, 
when pensions and sinecures were regarded as the natural 
spoil of all the connections of men in power. A curious 
feature of the period was the rising prejudice against 
* lawyer-politicians ' ; for in all the parliamentary countries, 
in France, Italy and America yet more than in Britain, the 
lawyers played a part in politics out of all proportion to 
their numbers. This was natural enough : law has, of all 
professions, the most direct relation with politics ; and 
the legal profession was almost the only one wherein a man 
of ability and public spirit could hope to earn an adequate 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 259 

livelihood while devoting a large part of his time to public 
affairs. But the prejudice against lawyer-politicians was 
worked for all it was worth ; the label was used as an 
argument ; and nobody seemed to see that other labels 
might be used in an equally damning way, and that 
1 landowner - politicians,' ' stockbroker - politicians ' or 
' linen-draper-politicians ' might with equal plausibility 
be represented as a public danger. But it was plain that 
all this was merely a mode of expressing a growing distrust 
of the parliamentary machine, which was due primarily to 
the fact that the parliamentary machine was being turned 
with increasing boldness to new ends, and, secondarily, to 
the fact that the machine did, in truth, need repair. 

From the other side distrust in the parliamentary 
system was fomented by the growing prevalence of the 
doctrine of class-war, and by the sedulously encouraged 
belief that, despite the apparently democratic machinery 
of the electoral system, the engine of power was, in fact, 
controlled by the secret forces of ' capitalism.' This 
theory, the exact opposite of the other, could be plausibly 
maintained by a judicious exaggeration of the undoubted 
influence which was wielded by large contributors to 
party funds, and by the vague power of High Finance. 
Distrust of the machinery of self-government, fomented 
by the constant criticism of the Press, led to a growing 
readiness to resort to violence, and to an undermining 
of the habit of observing and maintaining the laws until 
they could be altered by the conversion of the electorate, 
which is the very foundation of self-government. 

In France, where the revolutionary tradition was 
always strong, a new philosophy of violence was preached 
by Georges Sorel and his disciples of the Syndicalist 
movement. Impatient of attaining the vague and vast 



260 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

ends which Marx had foreshadowed, they borrowed from 
him only his purely materialist view of history, his dis- 
trust of ' Utopias,' or clearly realised ideals for the future, 
and his belief in the value of war for its own sake ; more 
logical than the Marxians, they altogether rejected the 
idea of working through Parliament, and advocated cease- 
less war for its own sake, in every industry, by means of 
strikes and sabotage. These doctrines, utterly fatal to 
the very notion of national co-operation, wielded a great 
influence in France and in Italy, where they led to much 
industrial disorder and afforded powerful arguments to 
the advocates of reaction. They had some influence in 
Britain also, though here they tended to assume the more 
rational form of a theory that organised labour should 
strive to obtain control of each industry, and thus to 
establish ' industrial self-government.' Even where 
Syndicalist doctrines obtained little or no influence, there 
was a growing readiness to resort to what were called 
' direct methods ' ; and strikes on a vast scale, whose 
aim seemed to be not merely to force the hand of the 
employers, but to hold the whole community to ransom 
by stopping the supply of universal necessities like coal, 
or interrupting essential public services like the railways, 
became common features in most of the great industrial 
States, and began to be used (as in Russia in 1905) as a 
means of securing political ends, by the use of force instead 
of persuasion. 

Nor was it only in the industrial sphere that this readi- 
ness to resort to violence displayed itself. The Ulstermen 
organised themselves under arms to resist an Act of 
Parliament ; the opposite party responded in kind, and 
among their followers the extremists of the Sinn Fein 
group began to conceive the idea of using this weapon to 



THE BREWING OE THE STORM 261 

establish a complete political independence for which the 
great majority of Irishmen had no desire. The suffragettes 
entered upon the policy of proving that they were likely 
to make a good use of the franchise by breaking windows, 
slashing knives through Old Masters, and burning down 
churches. The Nonconformists who objected to the pro- 
visions of an Education Act refused to pay a part of 
their taxes, and heroically allowed their teapots to be 
confiscated rather than loyally submit to the law until 
they should be able to alter it. Everywhere minorities 
seemed to show a new and alarming readiness to defy the 
law and to dislocate the whole working of society, if they 
could, in order to get their own way. The very founda- 
tions of organised society seemed to be threatened. Was 
this the result of self-government ? Was this the mode 
in which democracy was to work % It seemed to be so. 
The one country which was practically undisturbed by 
these disorders was Germany, the land of discipline. The 
moral seemed obvious. Parliamentarism was a failure. 
Upon this reactionaries and revolutionaries were agreed. 
But none of them had any substitute to recommend. 

Yet despite these ominous and perturbing features, 
and despite the intensifying strain and pressure of the 
international situation, there was a steady advance during 
these years, in the countries where democracy was furthest 
developed, both in the co-operation of various wings of 
the progressive parties for common parliamentary action, 
and in the boldness with which the powers of government 
were employed for new purposes of social reconstruction. 

In France, one of the most striking political features 
of the period was the definite co-operation of a large group 
of Parliamentary Socialists in the work of government ; 
which implied that the attitude of mere negation and 



262 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

blind hostility was being abandoned. Socialists took 
their place as members of ministries, or as Prime Ministers. 
They took their full part in the two most notable legisla- 
tive activities of the period. One of these was the final 
severance of Church and State. If this was carried out 
with a perhaps needless severity, the cause was to be 
found in the tradition which linked the Church with 
political reaction. The result was the alienation from the 
democratic State of some of its most valuable elements ; 
in the strain and anxiety of this time, the self-governing 
State could not afford to be generous to those whom it 
regarded as its domestic foes. The second main activity 
of the period was the beginning of a process of social 
reorganisation, due to the combination of the moderate 
Socialists with the hitherto purely political Radicals. 
The hours of labour were restricted ; the conditions of 
public health and the housing of the poor were brought 
under supervision ; schemes for an adequate provision 
for the aged and infirm were introduced ; and, perhaps 
most important of all, great advances were made in 
popular education. But one great obstacle stood in the 
way of these fruitful advances. They were costly ; and 
all the resources of the community were needed to prepare 
against the ever-present menace of a destructive war. 
Thus the progress of social reform, which would have 
done more than anything to ease the working of self- 
government, and to make the nation conscious of its 
communal responsibilities, was hampered and retarded 
by the root cause of all the unrest of these unhappy years. 
In Britain, also, the same features are perceptible, in 
a more acute form. During these years the old doctrine 
of laisser-faire in economic and social matters, which had 
never in actual fact enjoyed so great a dominion as it 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 263 

had in theory, was definitely abandoned by responsible 
leaders of all schools. The new spirit was demonstrated, 
before the Conservative Reaction came to its close in 
1906, by the valuable Education Act of 1902, which 
created the beginning of a logical and efficient system of 
national education. It is noteworthy that this system, 
instead of being carried out in a uniform manner under 
the direction of a central bureaucracy, as in France and 
Germany, was entrusted to the administration of local 
authorities, whose power was thus magnified, and which 
were not merely permitted but encouraged to make 
experiments, and to develop along lines of their own. If 
there was a loss of immediate efficiency under this system, 
it was, in the British view, more than balanced by the 
variety and freedom which it encouraged. Other 
measures also showed that the Conservatives were ready 
to use the power of the State for the reform of the social 
order ; this was a part of the motive even for the Tariff 
Reform movement which ultimately wrecked the Con- 
servative ministry, because the bulk of the democracy 
would have nothing to do with it. 

But the new era was still more definitely proclaimed 
by the appearance, in 1906, of a strong and distinctly 
organised Labour Party in Parliament, whose members, 
though few of them were Socialists in the continental 
sense, were united in the resolve to use the power of the 
State for social reorganisation, and to insist that the 
special point of view of wage-earning labour should be 
more directly considered than heretofore. Meanwhile, 
British Liberalism had almost wholly shed its old laisser- 
faire doctrines ; and hence it came about that the new 
Labour Party, though separately organised under a far 
more rigid discipline than the older parties, became in 



264 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

practice simply an independent left wing of Liberalism, 
giving its steady support to the Liberal ministry, and, on 
the other hand, strengthening and enforcing its loyalty to 
its new principles. This new situation, and especially 
the emergence and the rigid organisation of the Labour 
Party, filled many timid souls with fears. But the 
Labour men soon made it plain that they were no head- 
strong revolutionaries, vowed to a programme of mere 
wrecking and destruction. Their solid sense, honesty, 
courage, and public spirit won the respect of Parliament 
and of the nation. Apart from a handful of doctrinaires 
of the International and Marxian school, theirs was not 
the programme of ruthless ' class-war ' for its own sake, 
but of national co-operation in reconstruction. 

The years following 1906 were, in regard to legislation, 
the most active in the history of the British Parliament. 
Old age pensions were provided at the cost of the State : 
a huge scheme of insurance against invalidity and un- 
employment, more generous that that of Germany, was 
set up ; towns and rural districts were given powers to 
reconstruct themselves on saner plans ; trade boards 
were established to put an end to ' sweating ' ; free 
Labour Exchanges were set up all over the country to 
facilitate employment ; new facilities for the creation of 
agricultural small holdings were devised ; elaborate pro- 
visions were enacted for the protection of child life, and 
the community undertook the responsibility for feeding 
hungry children and for giving them medical attention ; 
main roads were reconstructed ; there were schemes for 
scientific afforestation. Here was a whole code of social 
legislation, such as would have terrified the politicians of 
an earlier generation. It terrified some of the politicians 
of this. For it cost vast sums ; and this at a time when 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 265 

the burden of national defence grew yearly more heavy. 
This caused the advocates of social reorganisation to be 
distrustful of expenditure on defence ; it caused those 
who were conscious of the menace of war to grudge ex- 
penditure upon social needs ; and this opposition seemed 
to confirm the view that ' capitalism ' and ' militarism ' 
were sworn allies, and to give further support to the 
doctrine of the class-war. Even in wealthy Britain, safe, 
as it appeared, behind the shield of the navy, the inter- 
national strain thus increased the friction which must 
in any case have been caused by this new use to which 
the power of democracy was being put. 

For so great a revolution of spirit and method could not 
be effected without arousing bitter opposition. It aroused 
all the more because these sweeping measures were in 
many cases hastily constructed, and inadequately dis- 
cussed in an overburdened legislative body ; because 
they were sometimes advocated with an unhappy vehe- 
mence which intensified instead of allaying the hostility 
of classes ; and because the means for defraying their 
immense cost could only be secured by a bold attack 
upon accumulated wealth. Nor were these the only 
causes of embitterment in the controversies of these 
years. With the social programme was linked an equally 
drastic series of political changes : the cession of complete 
self-government to the recently conquered provinces of 
South Africa ; the enlargement of public participation in 
the government of India; the disestablishment and partial 
disendowment of the Church in Wales, which seemed to 
many to threaten a similar attack upon the national 
Church in England, and a severance between Church and 
State like that which had come about in France ; above all, 
the proposal, backed by an overwhelming majority in the 



266 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

House of Commons, of a scheme of Home Rule for Ireland 
which threatened, whether it passed or was rejected, to 
produce civil war in that distressful land. These whole- 
sale projects of social and political revolution, as they 
seemed to the timid eyes of men who had not yet wit- 
nessed the vaster changes and demands of war, inevitably 
aroused all the forces of resistance ; and the centre of 
these was the House of Lords, the last stronghold, as it 
seemed to one school, of privilege and class ascendancy 
in self-governing Britain ; the last bulwark, as it seemed 
to others, against revolutionary madness. 

The House of Lords had survived through the period 
of constitutional reconstruction which had filled the 
nineteenth century, because during that period it had been 
very timid in the use of its powers. But during the last 
generation it had become both weaker and stronger : 
weaker because its composition showed no such balance of 
opposed views as existed in the country ; stronger because 
it now included not only the magnates of land, but also the 
magnates of trade, and seemed to be able to speak for the 
massed wealth of the country, as against the massed votes 
of the disinherited. It had with impunity reduced the 
Liberal ministry of 1892-95 to impotence. It had even 
ventured to reject some of the proposals of the huge House 
of Commons majority of 1906. But its culminating stroke 
was the rejection of the Budget of 1909. By this act it 
invaded the prerogative of control over finance which had 
been held, by the custom of more than two centuries, to 
belong exclusively to the Commons ; and with it the pre- 
rogative of dismissing ministries, the possession of which 
by the Commons had formed the keystone of the whole 
British system. This was revolution. On the other hand, 
it could reasonably be contended that as finance was being 



The brewing of the storm 267 

made the chief engine of a revolution, a Second Chamber 
which could not make its opinion felt on financial 
questions must be deprived of the power of performing 
one of its chief functions. 

On the issue thus raised, which embodied and brought to 
a head all the other issues at once, a violent storm of con- 
troversy raged for two years x ; nor was it ended by the 
passage of the Parliament Act of 191 1, whereby the powers 
of the House of Lords, not merely in finance but in the 
rejection or revision of legislation, were seriously curtailed. 
The controversy probed far deeper than the mere action or 
powers of the House of Lords, or the projects for its recon- 
struction, or the merits and demerits of the Budget, and 
the scheme of change which rested upon it. For some of 
the fundamental usages of the British system had been 
challenged, and the challenge raised a debate upon the 
whole working of the system. The House of Lords, no 
doubt, ought to be altered. But how 1 By a mere limita- 
tion of its powers, or by a reconstruction of its membership? 
That question involved the question of the need for, and 
the functions of, a Second Chamber ; which in its turn in- 
volved a discussion of the powers and working of the First 
Chamber, and of the relations of both to Cabinets and 
parties. Could the House of Commons itself, men asked, 
be regarded as in any strict sense representative of the 
nation ? Were not its growingly apparent deficiencies 
due in part to its unrepresentative character ? Its 
members were elected by constituencies which normally 
had no choice except between the candidates of two arti- 
ficially organised parties ; if more candidates than two 
presented themselves, the representative of a minority 

1 An attempt to analyse these problems is made in Peers and 
Bureaucrats (Constable, 1910). 



268 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

might easily be returned, and even he might only have 
received the votes of his supporters because there was 
nobody available who more nearly represented their 
opinions. When the elected members came up to West- 
minster, all their most important votes seemed to be deter- 
mined beforehand by the secret caucus of their party. 
Could this be called a true representation of the nation ? 
Were not the critics of parliamentarism, whether reac- 
tionaries or revolutionaries, justified by the facts ? The 
conclusion seemed plausible, and it helped to weaken still 
further men's already declining belief in the representative 
system. Again, was it not manifest that on such a system 
it was impossible to determine what was the real will of the 
nation upon even the greater issues. At the most the 
electors gave the preference to one or another of two groups 
of men, having no further choice. That was what parlia- 
mentary government under the party system implied. 

And, indeed, we must recognise that there is much truth 
in these criticisms. No workable electoral system that 
can be devised will make it possible to reflect exactly every 
variation in the opinions of a whole nation ; or if such a 
system existed, it must produce a chaotic body, incapable 
of maintaining any coherent government in power, or of 
criticising and controlling its actions. No electoral system 
can enable the electorate to express its opinion on every 
measure of public importance, nor is the electorate of any 
modern State capable of forming a useful opinion upon 
such a multitude of complex themes. It can only find 
representatives with whose general standpoint it agrees, 
and trust them to act in the spirit of their commission ; 
and upon the whole the party system presents the best 
means, even though it is a rather arbitrary means, of 
defining clearly the attitude of various aspirants for this 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 269 

trust. And it is the greatest safeguard against the abuse 
of the function thus devolved upon the leaders of parties, 
that they dare not propose measures which will completely 
alienate public support without paying for their blunders, 
and that they dare not depart from the undertakings 
they have given without suffering for it. With all its 
defects, the representative system as it worked in Britain 
did provide a means of ensuring that government should 
not be conducted in a way disapproved by the nation. 

The criticism of the representative system was ex- 
aggerated. But there was enough substance in it to 
justify the citizens of a living and growing society in 
discussing with ardour the possibility of removing its 
defects, and the means of making it answer more closely 
to the movement of the nation's mind. 

One such means seemed to be the provision of a 
really efficient Second Chamber which should qualify the 
unrepresentative character of the First Chamber, and be 
able to revise its proposals, and if necessary refer them 
to the electorate. Nine out of ten reasonable men were 
ready to agree that such a body was desirable ; eight of 
the nine (if they could divest their minds of party con- 
siderations) would add that the House of Lords was not 
capable of performing such functions adequately in a 
democratic society ; but no two of the eight could agree as 
to the means by which such a body could best be obtained, 
or as to the powers it should enjoy. This vital problem 
was still unsolved, having been swept aside by other and 
more immediately urgent problems, when the whole argu- 
ing crew of the ship of State were swept together over the 
cataract of the Great War. 

There were some who found a solution for these diffi- 
culties in the proposal that disputed measures should be 



270 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

submitted to the electorate by a referendum, after the 
manner already applied in Switzerland and elsewhere. 
But this must have the effect of accentuating the weak- 
ness of the representative body, instead of amending it. 
Moreover, a popular electorate cannot profitably discuss 
the details of complex legislative proposals ; it is often 
upon the details that controversy hinges ; and even if 
the issues were to be put to the electors in an abbreviated 
and simplified form, all must depend upon who has the 
drafting of the questions. This question, also, had not 
yet been seriously discussed when the great crisis arose. 
Others, again, professed to find the root of all evil in the 
party system, which it became a commonplace, in many 
circles, to condemn. But nobody could put forward an 
alternative to it which would maintain the advantage of 
coherent government exposed to continuous and respon- 
sible criticism — an advantage which the party system 
undeniably secures — or which would avoid the dangers 
of a system of shifting and corruptible groups. Nobody 
could suggest a means whereby men who held the same 
beliefs could be prevented from acting together, and 
organising to secure the victory of their cause. What was 
usually in the minds of the oppugners of the party system 
was seldom more than the naive but unhelpful notion 
that if everybody agreed with themselves, the well-being 
of the nation would be assured. 

Nor were these the only problems of government that 
were becoming urgent. The enlargement of govern- 
mental functions was necessarily bringing about a vast 
enlargement both of the numbers and of the functions 
of bureaucracy ; and the problems of the place which 
bureaucracy should occupy in the British system, the 
ways in which the bureaucrats should be selected and 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 271 

trained, the modes in which they should be controlled, 
and the congenital dangers of bureaucratic government 
guarded against, by the establishment of a satisfactory 
relationship between the public offices and the supreme 
Parliament, were rising into practical importance. 

And alongside of all these problems of organisation was 
the deeper problem, now perturbing all thinking men, 
which was raised by the manifest increase in the willing- 
ness of large sections of the community to resort to 
violent means of getting their own way. At a time when 
the nation was addressing itself to the task of reorganising 
the economic basis of its life, and when it was realising 
that the traditional machinery of self-government needed 
a good deal of overhauling if it was to perform this work 
with efficiency and justice, considerable elements in a 
nation which had always prided itself upon its respect 
for law seemed to be losing this respect — seemed to be 
abandoning that willingness to trust to argument and 
persuasion for the securing of their ends, and that loyalty 
to the decision of the majority until the majority can be 
persuaded to change its mind, which is the very founda- 
tion of self-government. There was only one means by 
which these dangerous tendencies could be subdued ; and 
this was by the restoration of that confidence in the 
system which had been undermined by recent events, and 
by the defects which the strain of the times was displaying 
in the system itself. 

Here was, indeed, a crisis in the fortunes of self- 
government. The oldest of the self-governing nations 
was engaged in a debate upon fundamentals. It was a 
profitable and useful debate. It arose naturally out of 
the fact that government was assuming functions far 
more complex, and far more deeply affecting the daily 



272 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

life of its subjects, than ever before. Carried on by a 
people in whom the experience of centuries had bred the 
habits of reasonable compromise and good sense, it would 
doubtless have led to useful results if it could have been 
conducted in an atmosphere of security and good-will. 
An efficient reorganisation of the procedure of the House 
of Commons ; a frank use of devolution to reduce the 
burden of its work, such as the strength of local institu- 
tions in Britain rendered practicable ; a reconstruction 
of the Second Chamber ; a reasonable modification of the 
rigidity of party such as might be readily secured by 
regulations as to the use and publicity of party funds : 
all these things would without doubt soon have been 
achieved. But the great debate had to be carried on 
against the background of German preparations, and the 
suspicions, not only among States, but among parties 
and interests within the State, which the nightmare of 
impending disaster fomented. The transition of self- 
government through one of the crises in its development 
could not be easily or safely achieved in the presence of 
such a menace. Even for the rich island-state, with its 
long traditions of ordered freedom, these years showed 
that the world had yet to be made safe for democracy. 

Germany looked on with interest, not unmixed with 
contempt. She suffered scarcely at all from these sources 
of disorganisation. The land of firmly rooted authority, 
raised high above the storms of popular passion, the land 
of disciplined obedience, was confirmed by this spectacle 
of the apparent decrepitude of parliamentary govern- 
ment in its ineffable belief in the superiority of its 
own institutions. Parliamentarism was a manifest and 
patent failure. The strong State which had kept itself 
free of the pestilence might hope to profit by its ravages 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 273 

among her rivals. She supplied arms and secret encour- 
agement to the embattled parties in Ireland. She watched 
with gleeful contempt the antics of the suffragettes. 
She was persuaded that when her day came she would 
have to deal with decadent, disorganised, and disunited 
peoples, who would be easily overthrown. She would 
show that the world was not safe for democracy. 

But even in Germany there were misgivings ; even in 
Germany the demand for an enlargement of self-govern- 
ment was growing in an alarming way. The number of the 
Social Democrats was increasing ; on the eve of the war 
they had one hundred and ten members in the Reichstag ; 
they were already the most numerous of the parties, and 
it seemed possible that they would before long command 
a majority. Tamed as they were by all the influences 
that surrounded them, and ready to be the instruments of 
government in the expansion of German greatness, they 
nevertheless stood for an idea which would cut at the 
roots of the German system : they demanded that govern- 
ment should be responsible to the Reichstag. If they 
should ever attain a definite majority, and still persist in 
this demand, they might make the conduct of government 
on the old lines very difficult ; for it would then be im- 
possible for autocracy to maintain a working majority 
by playing off the parties against one another, as it 
had long done. In that event, the autocracy would 
be faced by the unpleasant alternative of either sub- 
mitting, or boldly disregarding the Reichstag, as Bis- 
marck had disregarded the Prussian Landtag in the years 
1862-66. Submission would mean the overthrow of 
the most distinctive features of the German system : 
the unchecked power which was wielded by government 
over the minds and bodies of its subjects, and the steady 

s 



274 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

consistency with which it pursued the supreme end of 
extending German power in the world, undeflected by 
popular clamours, and unhampered by the necessity of 
exposing its plans to criticism. It would mean that 
Germany would be reduced to the level of the parliamen- 
tary States, whose policy was liable to be varied in accord- 
ance with changes in public opinion. On the other hand, 
direct resistance to a standing majority in the Reichstag 
opened a vista of conflict and disturbance, and might 
imperil the ascendancy of government over the minds of 
its subjects. Even Bismarck could not permanently have 
resisted the majority in the Landtag ; he was, in the 
end, only able to still opposition by giving it intoxicating 
draughts cf military success. The analogy was sugges- 
tive. Victories still more dazzling than Bismarck's would 
remove all danger of a new challenge to autocracy. It is 
probable that the anxiety aroused among the governing 
circles of Germany by the growing strength of the 
Socialists formed one of the motives for undertaking the 
great adventure of the war. Thus, in Germany as else- 
where, the aggressive and conquering programme of the 
German government was hostile to the development of 
democracy. 

If, during these years, the rulers of Germany felt some 
qualms of anxiety regarding the growth of democratic 
sentiment in their own country, there were also to be 
heard whispers of discontent with the wonderful Prussian 
system, not only among the Socialists, but in other and 
more unlikely quarters. The system brought wealth, 
prosperity, national strength and prestige, and the in- 
toxicating dreams of coming triumphs. But might it not 
be that these material boons were purchased at too great 
a cost ? Was it in the end good for the mind and soul of 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 2?5 

a nation that it should be so regulated and controlled, so 
cosseted, so held in leading-strings ? ' In my opinion,' 
a National Liberal deputy said in the Reichstag in 1910, 
1 the reform which we need is that we should be governed 
less than now. . . . We are in danger of being suffocated 
by all the love and care bestowed upon us. Who can be 
sure as he lays himself down to sleep at night that he is 
not transgressing some police regulation or other. . . . 
And yet we boast that we are a mature people ! ' Here 
spoke the misgiving of a man who, without penetrating 
very deeply, felt that individuality and character were 
being starved by the very efficiency of autocracy. The 
misgiving obtained a more penetrating expression, a few 
years before the war, from a distinguished German 
educationalist, Dr. Frieclrich Paulsen. Discussing the 
popularity in Germany of brutal, immoral and violent 
types of literature, and the influence of the philosophy of 
violence of which Nietzsche was the greatest exponent, he 
attributed it to the dangerous moral condition produced 
by over-discipline. An over-regulated nation, like an 
over-regulated boy, is tempted to throw off all restraints 
and give the rein to its worst passions when the oppor- 
tunity for indulging them occurs. ' The picture offered 
by our people,' Paulsen wrote, ' is certainly not edifying. 
A healthy, free people, conscious of its power, is not on 
the one hand so tame and cowed, nor on the other so 
wild in its literary pleasures. It is the dulled, anaemic, 
starved body which yearns for stupefaction by indulgence 
in strong drinks.' Rightly regarded, this is a report upon 
the condition of a nation more ominous than any of the 
superficial indications of restlessness and disorganisation 
which we have noted among the self-governing peoples. 
And Dr. Paulsen might have found, in the official criminal 



276 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

statistics of his country, still more perturbing evidence 
than that afforded by its literature of the demoralising 
influences of the Prussian system, and the worship of 
mere brute force which it inspired. In the year 1911 
over 172,000 persons were convicted in Germany of 
aggravated assaults and similar offences ; the corre- 
sponding figure for England and Wales for the same year 
was 1720. Again, in that one year more murders were 
committed in Germany by boys between the ages of 
twelve and eighteen than were committed in England and 
Wales by persons of all ages and both sexes. Yet again, 
in 1911 there were in Germany 14,872 cases of violence 
against women : the corresponding number in England 
and Wales was 562. Such facts as these were, in the years 
before the war, arousing grave anxiety among German 
social students. It may be said that they cannot fairly 
be attributed to the influence of a system of government. 
But behind the system of government is the spirit which 
inspires it. In Germany this was the spirit of belief in 
violence, worship of brute force, disregard of right ; and 
we have seen with what persistent subtlety this spirit 
was transfused through the whole nation by way of the 
schools and the barracks. We have seen its results in 
the orgy of bestiality and cruelty into which the manhood 
of Germany has willingly plunged during the war. For a 
long time men found it impossible to believe that a civilised 
nation could so conduct itself. Is not the horror in some 
degree illumined and explained by the indications which 
were already emerging before the war of the moral effects 
of the German social and political system ? 

At the opening of the new century the contrast between 
the effects of self-government and autocracy was being 
very clearly displayed. Externally, and in material 



THE BREWING OF THE STORM 277 

things, the advantage seemed to lie on the side of auto- 
cracy, which was able to organise with supreme efficiency 
the whole resources of the nation for the pursuit of material 
advantage, and to indoctrinate it with the fundamentally 
immoral belief that wrong may be justified by success, and 
that power is the only thing that matters in the world. 
Over against this definitely conceived and strenuously 
pursued aim, the ideal of the self-governing States seemed 
to be hopelessly vague and unattainable ; since it bade 
the peoples who had taken it as their guide to organise 
their own well-being in co-operation, and to pursue as 
their supreme aim not Power, but Justice, a goddess who 
continually evades her pursuers, though she exalts and 
ennobles them in the pursuit. In the complex and closely 
interrelated life of the unified modern world, these two 
conceptions could not exist side by side. The world could 
not be ' safe for democracy ' so long as the other ideal 
dominated a powerful and aggressive nation ; what was 
more, the disciples of the opposite faith were realising 
that the world could not be safe for autocracy, so long 
as the alluring ideals of freedom, justice and brotherhood 
were allowed to play upon the minds of their submissive 
subjects. It was from the side of autocracy that the 
challenge came ; a challenge to a life and death struggle, 
the last ordeal of self-government, which could not be 
evaded or refused. 






THE SUPREME ISSUE 

The world was slow to appreciate the full significance of 
the Great War. At first it appeared to many as a mere 
conflict of power between two rival groups of States, the 
most colossal that had ever taken place, but not essentially 
different in kind from many earlier conflicts ; and the 
States which were so fortunate as not to be involved 
believed that it was their duty, to themselves and to the 
world, to hold aloof, with what patience they could 
muster, until the madness should wear itself out, and the 
world should return to its old jog-trot. Even now, in the 
fourth year of the struggle, this shallow view is not dead ; 
it is implicit in the attitude of the little groups of self 
satisfied pacifists which are to be found in all the belligerent 
countries, and the few surviving neutrals still pathetically 
cling to it. But the world as a whole has realised that the 
issues are far more fundamental than any mere rivalry of 
power ; and that the whole character and future develop- 
ment of our civilisation hang in the balance. That is why 
almost the whole world is ranged on the same side in the 
conflict : a League of Nations, of almost all races and 
tongues, is already in existence, and what has formed this 
League — what could alone have formed it — is the belief 
that the common interests of the whole world, now unified 
politically and economically as never before, are at stake. 
For the war has brought to a crisis, simultaneously, all 

878 



THE SUPREME ISSUE 279 

the great political ideals of western civilisation which have 
gradually emerged during the last four centuries. Their 
emergence and development have given significance to the 
history of these centuries. They seemed to have won 
their victory during the nineteenth century, to have 
attained at last a clear definition, and to have been 
accepted as the guiding principles of politics by the con- 
science of civilisation, not in Europe only, but in a great 
degree throughout the world. The first of these ideals is i 
the principle of nationality, which asserts that the unity of 
sentiment which we call the national spirit constitutes the 
only sound basis for the organisation of the State. The. 
second is the international principle, which asserts that 
the interests of the whole civilised world are essentially 
one, and endeavours to protect the rights of all by inter- 
national co-operation and by the maintenance of an inter- 
national system of law. The third is the principle of self- 
government, which asserts that all peoples whose traditions 
and training make it possible ought to have a full and 
effective share in the control of their own destinies. The 
fourth we may call the principle of the tutelage of the 
European peoples over the non-European world, and it 
asserts that the mastery of the whole world which western 
civilisation has won by virtue of its inherent superiority 
ought to be wielded not with a view solely to the material 
advantage of the ruling races, but with a view to training 
the subject peoples to play their parts as free members of 
a world-society ; that, in short, it should be wielded in the 
spirit of the trustee, not of the slave-owner. 

Because these ideals, which have been struggling for 
expression during four centuries, had at last attained to 
clear definition, the defiance and repudiation of them ' 
which is involved in the aggressive aims of Germany is at 



280 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

once far more open, far more deliberate, and far more 
dangerous than that which was involved in any earlier 
attempt of a superficially similar kind. A German victory 
would not merely destroy all hope of the satisfaction of 
national aspirations in the troubled region of eastern and 
south-eastern Europe ; it would imperil and impair the 
freedom of the oldest and most solidly established nations 
of Europe. The German conduct of the war has from the 
very outset been marked by the most brutal disregard of 
every principle of international law : ' International law 
no longer exists,' said the Kaiser himself to Mr. Gerard ; 
it is Germany who has destroyed it, and, without much 
disguise, Germany aims at substituting her own dictation 
for the co-operative agreement of the civilised world. 
Germany is the supreme type of an efficiently organised 
autocracy ; her system denies to the people all control 
over the direction of national policy ; and if she succeed 
in holding her own against the banded democracies of the 
world, not only will the chains of autocracy be firmly 
welded upon the German people and their vassals, but self- 
government will appear to be proved a failure, or at all 
events a premature experiment, in other lands also, and it 
will have to be abandoned or gravely qualified in order 
that the now free peoples may organise themselves for a 
further struggle. Finally, as Germany has shown herself 
in the past utterly ruthless in the exploitation of her 
subject peoples, her victory would initiate an era of ruth- 
less exploitation of the non-European world with a view 
to future war, in which, in self-defence, all peoples would 
have to share, and the supremacy of Europe over the non- 
European world would become an intolerable burden and 
curse, which would not be long endured. 

Of all these momentous issues, the greatest is that of 



THE SUPREME ISSUE 281 

self-government. It is the greatest because, as events 
have very clearly shown, the rival principle, that of 
autocracy, is in truth the source of all our woes. A 
despotism, or a caste-ascendancy, may be, and often has 
been, a necessary stage in the education of a people ; 
necessary for the welding of national unity, and for the 
creation of the habit of obedience to law. But it is only 
among undeveloped or ill-organised peoples that it use- 
fully serves these purposes ; and even then, the auto- 
cracy or the caste, by its very nature, tends to think 
primarily of the extension of its power, and to cultivate 
the well-being of the community only as a means to that 
end. In a highly developed and well-organised society 
the ascendancy of an autocrat or of a caste is no longer 
necessary for the purposes which justify its existence at 
an earlier stage. But its inherent love of power still 
exists ; and if it can communicate this passion to the 
people whom it rules, if it can achieve an effective control 
over their minds and their resources, it will become a 
tenfold greater menace to all its neighbours, just because 
the power for mischief of a highly developed society is 
tenfold greater than that of a backward people. Such a 
menace the German autocracy had long been to all the 
self-governing States ; we have seen how, even in times 
of peace, it had made the world ' unsafe for democracy,' 
and in war it threatened the very existence of all the free 
States. No self-governing community could ever become 
such a menace. Self-governing societies may be, and 
often are, carried away by momentary gusts of emotion ; 
they may be inspired by jealousy or prejudice or greed, 
they may be intoxicated for a time by the sense of power. 
But by their very nature it is impossible for them to 
pursue a single dominating end with the unrelenting per- 



282 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

sistence, secrecy and inflexibility which is possible for an 
autocratic government ; for the essence of the self- 
governing system is that it is controlled by ever-varying 
currents of opinion, which set, on the whole, and despite 
frequent deflections, in the direction of justice. And in 
particular it is impossible for a self-governing community 
to be in permanent antipathy to the causes of national 
freedom or international co-operation, which are inspired 
ultimately by the same ideals as self-government itself. 
The survival of autocracy, therefore, in a highly developed 
community is the root cause of all these dangers. The 
world was slow to see this ; nor was it plainly and boldly 
enunciated until the entry of America into the war. It 
is to President Wilson that we owe the pregnant state- 
ment that the world must be made ' safe for democracy/ 
and that this is the root of the whole matter. And the 
world can only be ' safe for democracy ' when autocracy, 
with its fundamentally vicious ideals, has been banished 
from among the highly developed States. Democratic 
self-government is not, in any of the guises which it has 
assumed, a perfect form of government. It is as yet in 
its infancy, even in the lands where it has existed longest, 
and whose peoples have been most fully trained to partici- 
pate in it. It has many troubles and difficulties yet 
before it. It will never, perhaps, attain to the mechanical 
efficiency which, in favouring circumstances, autocracy 
can attain. But it pursues the ideals of freedom and 
justice ; and this of itself more than balances its defects. 
Only by its victory can the world be freed from the 
poisonous influence of the Doctrine of Power, which has 
hung like a miasma over almost all its history. 

The war, then, is in the last resort a duel to the death 
between the principles of autocracy and self-government, 



THE SUPREME ISSUE 283 

neither of which can feel itself safe while the other re- 
mains unfettered. It was but slowly that the free peoples 
realised this ; but the autocrats, or those whose ideal was 
autocracy, saw it very quickly, and wherever there were 
forces that dreaded the triumph of self-government, there 
Germany found helpers and allies. In Greece the 
camarilla which surrounded the worthless king and his 
German wife, were willing to betray their allies, to play 
the traitor to the powers to whom Greece owed her 
existence, and to sell the obvious interests of their 
country, in order that royal power might win a victory 
over the hated leader of democracy. In Spain, while 
popular feeling in the more advanced centres was all on 
the side of the Allies, the knot of politicians who rig the 
nominal machinery of self-government to suit their own 
purposes were partisans of Germany, ready even to 
wink at her being supplied from their coasts with the 
means of sinking Spanish ships, if by that means the 
defeat of self-government might be attained. In Italy 
it was among the clericals and the reactionaries that 
Germany found her main strength, though she was aided 
also by the fanatics of International Socialism. 

But it was in Russia that the position of Germany as 
the champion of autocracy exercised the most remarkable 
influence. The vital interests of Russia were threatened 
by the German challenge, and it was against Russia that 
this challenge was in the first instance directed. Yet 
because Russia was ruled by an autocracy which felt its 
own position insecure, dreaded the victory of the principle 
of self-government even more than military defeat and 
humiliation, and feared that the downfall of Germany 
might be followed by the downfall of despotism in Russia 
itself, its agents were half-hearted in the pursuit of victory, 



284 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

and some of them were even ready to become the secret 
agents of the enemy. Because of this distraction of 
interest, Russia failed, after the first few months, to play 
her proper part in the struggle ; while at the same time 
her membership of the Grand Alliance discredited its free 
members in the eyes of the neutral world, and seemed to 
stultify their claim to be fighting for liberty. Half- 
heartedness, corruption and frank treason combined to 
produce the Russian disasters of 1915. When the existing 
organs of self-government in Russia, the emasculated 
Duma, and the rigidly limited Zemstva, tried to remedy 
the deficiencies which were due to the bureaucracy, they 
were checked and hampered in every possible way. 
Finally the very fact of defeat was used by strong elements 
in the Russian ruling class as an excuse for negotiating 
for a separate peace, in the hope of saving Tsarism by 
making friends with the formidable champion of auto- 
cracy. This would have been the greatest betrayal in 
history, and it might have brought about the ruin of all 
the great causes for which the Allies were fighting. It 
was avoided only by the sudden revolutionary upheaval 
of March 1917, which swept Tsarism aside, and by ranging 
Russia among the democratic States, isolated Germany 
and her vassals as the only surviving States of Europe 
which still repudiated the ideal of self-government, and 
made the great issue clearer to the world than it had 
hitherto been. 

The Russian Revolution is an event too complex, too 
confused, and as yet too undetermined in its issues, to 
be profitably discussed in this place. Its first results 
were political chaos, and a dislocation of the country's 
military system even worse than that which had been due 
to the corruption of the old regime. The Russian people 



THE SUPREME ISSUE) 285 

had been denied every opportunity of political education ; 
and there was no organised power capable of taking the 
place of the old organs of government which had been 
destroyed. The city mobs and the illiterate peasant 
soldiery, who now controlled the course of events, identified 
liberty with the mere abolition of all discipline, and of all 
restraints upon their action ; and they fell an easy prey 
to the catchwords of International Socialism, whose fluent 
exponents were the conscious or unconscious catspaws of 
the German government. If in its first movements the 
Russian Revolution seemed to be a supreme triumph for 
the cause of self-government, the chaos which followed 
largely undid this conviction, because it showed the 
dangers to which an undisciplined democracy is liable, 
and reminded men that the first necessity for the main- 
tenance of organised society is that there should be a 
strongly organised government capable of making its 
will respected. We were forced to realise, what the 
sweeping democratic theory of the nineteenth century 
had never admitted, that the sudden introduction of 
democracy in a community which is not ready for it 
may lead to anarchy. Thus the misgivings of the old 
regime in Russia, and the treachery which it contemplated, 
followed by the whirling chaos and dislocation of the 
revolution, inflicted grave detriment upon the Grand 
Alliance, and seriously imperilled the great twin causes 
of Law and Liberty for which they were fighting. 

The champion of autocracy proved to be a very terrible 
and formidable foe, able to resist with success a world in 
arms. His superb efficiency in the arts of war, the pro- 
duct of long and tireless preparation, his absolute and 
centralised control of all the resources of his own State 
and of his vassals, his central geographical position, his 



286 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

complete and subtly organised domination of the minds 
of his subjects, his readiness to stoop to all the arts of 
deceit and intrigue, his utter unscrupulousness in the 
employment of every weapon of terror — murder, slavery, 
torture, outrage — his skill in playing upon the diverse 
currents of opinion which exist in every free State, all 
combined to make him terribly strong. But he could 
also rely upon the assistance of every force hostile to 
that free co-operation of classes which is the essence of 
democracy. He could count not only upon ambitious 
kinglets, court camarillas, corrupt politicians, and all the 
forces of obscurantism, but also upon those elements in 
the popular movements of all countries which, inspired 
by Marx and by his doctrines of violence and class-war, 
scorn the dream of co-operation for the common weal. 
He was helped even by the accidents of Fortune : even 
the Clerk of the Weather seemed to have enlisted on his 
side. When these lines were written, it could not be said 
that his utter defeat was assured, even though four-fifths 
of the world were ranged against him, and all men of 
good-will prayed for his overthrow. Apollyon is a very 
dreadful foe, a fierce fighter and a master of gins and 
snares ; and he who contends with him must have inex- 
haustible courage and resolution. Under the prolonged 
stress and anguish of such a conflict, every element of 
weakness is searched out ; and even men of good-will, 
if there be in them any strain of irresolution or senti- 
mentalism, are tempted to talk of peace where there can 
be no peace, and to dally with the idea of a friendly com- 
promise between Right and Wrong. The grim and un- 
relenting powers that direct the action of the foe show 
no such weakness ; whatever the price in suffering and 
destruction, the}' will not abandon their unchanging aim. 



THE SUPREME ISSUE 287 

It would be better that we should all go down into ruin 
together than that there should be any paltering with 
the Devil : fiat justitia ruat caelum ; and despite all the 
clamour of the half-hearted that is the temper of the 
free nations. 

The war has terribly tested the fibre of all the nations 
engaged ; and it has tried in the ordeal of fire the rival 
systems of government, bringing out mercilessly their 
defects as well as their virtues. It has shown that self- 
government is ill adapted for the dreadful business of 
war, not, indeed, in comparison with autocracy as such, 
for the self-governing countries have shown far greater 
efficiency than autocratic Russia, but in comparison with 
scientific autocracy of the German pattern. And if it 
be true, as the political philosophers of Germany main- 
tain, that war is the supreme function of the State, a 
1 biological necessity ' for which human societies should 
make it their first duty to prepare themselves, it must be 
acknowledged that political freedom is an illusion, an 
ignis fatuus, which wise men will no longer pursue. 

On the other hand, the war has shown that among 
those peoples in whom the habits of self-government are 
rooted, it produces a wonderful capacity for self -discipline, 
for endurance, and for the willing subordination of every- 
thing to a great idea. That is perhaps the noblest moral 
of the war. Though they have foregone all the elaborate 
training in subordination and obedience which Germany 
has assiduously cultivated, and have paid no attention to 
the German arts of regimenting and controlling opinion, 
the self-governing peoples have endured, undismayed, 
terrors and brutalities such as the Germans have never 
been called upon to endure, and never will be called upon 
to endure even should their country be overrun and 



288 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

conquered by invading armies. Their armies have gone 
through the agonies of retreat and apparent disaster with- 
out losing courage or hope ; and have then turned at bay 
and beaten back the triumphant enemy. They have had 
to endure the shock of finding unanticipated engines of 
war, against which they had no defence prepared, brought 
into the field against them, and have undergone, month 
after month, the terrible ordeal of defending frozen or 
water-logged trenches against heavy odds. They have 
faced without flinching horrors worse than had ever been 
experienced or imagined since the world began ; and they 
have gone to meet these horrors with a fuller and clearer 
comprehension of their meaning than was ever possible 
to their predecessors, for this is the first war which has 
been fought by armies of educated men. Only in one 
case have these terrors succeeded in awakening the panic 
they were designed to create ; and this was among the 
illiterate soldiery of Russia, untrained to the responsi- 
bilities of freedom, and suddenly emancipated from the 
rigid discipline which is autocracy's substitute for these 
responsibilities. The German soldiery has, it is true, 
undergone without flinching an equally terrible ordeal in 
the field. But at least it is plain that self-government 
does not undermine the capacity for discipline, endurance 
and sacrifice of the peoples who have enjoyed it. And 
in this war not only the moral of the soldier, but the moral 
of the civilian has been terribly tested in the self-govern- 
ing lands. Old men and women and children in great 
cities or quiet country places have watched the dropping 
of midnight murder from the skies, helpless to defend 
themselves, yet never allowing their fears to weaken the 
resolution of their country. Sailors and non-combatant 
passengers have braved the terrors of the lurking sub- 



THE SUPREME ISSUE 289 

marine, with its sudden shattering torpedoes, and still 
continue with quiet valour to go about their business. 
These are tests of the moral of peoples, the like of which 
no earlier generation has ever had to undergo, and they 
have been endured practically only by the self-governing 
peoples, since the methods of random murder and calcu- 
lated atrocity are happily, as yet, a German monopoly. 
Perhaps the Germans would show the same courage in 
endurance ; we shall never know, because they will never 
be called upon to submit to the brutalities which they 
have inflicted upon other peoples. But at least we may 
claim that the rigid discipline of a system of autocracy 
cannot produce a more sublime valour in endurance than 
has been shown by the peoples who are free. 

And in yet deeper ways the war has demonstrated the 
moral power that self-governing institutions help to culti- 
vate in the peoples who enjoy them. It was not surprising 
that the German hosts should be brave and confident when 
they advanced to seize what they had every reason for 
believing to be an assured triumph, or when they battled 
to maintain their hold upon the lands which they had 
conquered ; this was the culmination towards which all 
their long discipline had looked. But the proud and 
modest staunchness of the Belgians, government and 
people alike offering themselves as a sacrifice to their 
honour, and enduring with quiet dignity all the sickening 
brutalities which the conquerors could inflict upon them — 
what is there in history to surpass this devotion of a free 
and prosperous people ? Or where shall you match the 
spectacle of France, as she has shown herself during this 
war ? A great nation at her ease, taken by surprise in 
full peace and at a holiday season by the sudden but long- 
prepared onslaught of a terrible enemy, she saw her armies, 

T 



290 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

unready and outnumbered, hurled back with terrible 
losses ; she saw her richest provinces torn from her and 
left at the mercy of scientific savagery ; she saw the daily 
trainloads of her wounded sons, whom all her hospitals 
were insufficient to accommodate ; she heard the awful 
stories of the gratuitous rapine and desolation wrought by 
her bestial foe in beautiful old cities and trim country- 
sides ; yet she set quietly to work, without panic or recrim- 
ination, men and women, priests and atheists, nobles and 
peasants, forgetting all private quarrels, and united in an 
unwavering resolution to save their homeland and their 
cherished freedom. Time and again her hopes of victory 
were broken ; month after month the drain on her life- 
blood continued, and the enemy jeered that she was being 
bled white ; still, without faltering, she kept her face 
towards the foe, and her proud spirit refused even to think 
of peace till justice should be done. That is the moral of a 
self-governing people. And what shall be said of Italy, 
safe out of the tornado, whose people, overriding the 
natural hesitation of their statesmen, clamoured to be 
enrolled in the defence of freedom, at a moment when the 
Grand Alliance was staggering from the effects of the 
smashing German blows on the Russian front ? And 
where will be found a parallel in all history for the rising 
of the British volunteers, five millions of them presenting 
themselves within a year, men of all classes and types, 
pouring in from the forge, the field, the club, the office, the 
class-room, the dosshouse, faster than they could be 
trained or equipped, and only the more eagerly when they 
heard the news of defeats and disasters, or of horrors and 
carnage unimaginable ? Behind the strong shield of the 
navy their homes and children long seemed safe enough 
from the outrages which Belgium and France were endur- 



The supreme issue 29i 

ing ; but freedom was imperilled, and there were hideous 
wrongs to be righted. This also is the moral of a self- 
governing people ; it stirs the blood like a trumpet. And to 
their side came crowding also the self-governing colonists, 
separated by thousands of miles from the area of conflict, 
and under no sort of compulsion to take part ; yet they 
came to share the ghastly perils of their brothers in the 
defence of freedom, in such numbers that the men from 
these remote and thinly peopled lands who have volun- 
tarily offered their lives and their careers outnumber the 
greatest army ever put into the field in the history of 
warfare, before the dark year of 1914. Assuredly courage, 
and readiness to sacrifice all for a great cause, willingly and 
without reward, are qualities gloriously prevalent in the 
lands that have enjoyed self-government. The warlike 
virtues are not a monopoly of the State that trains its sons 
to rejoice in war, and orders its life with a view to war. 
Nor is it only courage that has been exhibited by the men 
of the free nations ; they have shown a chivalry towards 
the weak, and even towards enemy prisoners stained with 
unnameable iniquities, which equals their courage ; and 
in this the Germans, brave as they are, have no share. It 
would, of course, be absurd to attribute these shining 
qualities wholly to the influence of a system of govern- 
ment or even to the moral conceptions of which it is the 
expression. But at least it is reassuring to find these 
qualities so nobly displayed among peace-loving peoples 
who are masters of their own fate : they show that self 
government does not mean self-indulgence, and they rob 
the advocates of disciplined autocracy of the sole argument 
they have ever been able to adduce in defence of the moral 
influence of this system upon its subjects. Self-discipline 
is manifestly a nobler thing than discipline enforced. 



292 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

Before the war we might have feared that self-government, 
while it had all but destroyed the discipline of authority, 
was failing to replace it with self -discipline. The ordeal 
of the war has proved the falsity of these fears. 

On the other hand, it has displayed in grim relief the 
hideous moral results of a regime of over-discipline, and of 
the doctrines of brute power. One of the most impressive 
aspects of the war has been the evidence it has yielded that 
all those forces in national life to which we trust to keep 
the mind of the nation sane, true and upright have been, in 
Germany, debased and enslaved by the influence of the 
government. Very early in the war ninety-three of the 
most distinguished German scholars, philosophers and 
theologians, men whose lives had been devoted to the 
pursuit of truth, issued a manifesto in which they en- 
deavoured to refute the plainly established charges made 
against the German government and army. They 
produced no evidence ; they confined themselves to mere 
flat denials of every charge, in defiance of the facts, 
trusting to the prestige of their reputation. Es ist nicht 
wahr ! was the sum and substance of their pronouncement. 
The manifesto of the ninety-three intellectuals will never 
be forgotten ; for there is in all history no other such 
instance of a body of men whose business is the pursuit 
of truth throwing all canons of evidence to the winds, and 
slavishly assuming that that is truth which is convenient 
for their national interests. Nor is it only learning that 
has been enslaved and blinded. The astounding collection 
of blasphemies collected by an eminent Danish theologian 
from German war sermons by Lutheran divines shows that 
religion and the clergy have equally been bound to the 
chariot-wheels of Power. 

Again, whatever view we may have taken of the 



THE SUPREME ISSUE 293 

doctrines of German Social Democracy, we have always 
supposed that it was, at least, independent of government 
control, and that it was vowed to hostility against the 
whole system of autocracy and of militarism. The events 
of the war have shown that the Social Democrats also 
have been indoctrinated with the conceptions which in- 
spire the German government and with which it has 
poisoned the nation's mind. We have seen them, in 
many ways and in many countries, acting as informal 
agents on behalf of their government ; intriguing in 
neutral countries ; playing upon the shallow sentimen- 
talism of International Socialists in belligerent countries ; 
labouring to reduce Russia to chaos ; buying up news- 
papers in Rumania to turn them into German organs ; 
trying to cast the veil of liberal sentiments over the 
nakedness of military autocracy. A single episode may 
suffice to show how fully the Socialists are, in essential 
things, the minions of autocracy. In September 1914, 
after the occupation of Brussels by the German army, 
four German Socialists, three of whom were members of 
the Reichstag while the fourth was editor of a Socialist 
newspaper, visited the Socialists of Brussels to persuade 
them to accept the situation submissively. The Belgians 
complained of the violation of Belgian neutrality. Here 
is the reply of Dr. Koster, editor of the Hamburger Echo, 
on behalf of his colleagues. ' It is all your fault. You 
ought to have let us pass ; you would have been hand- 
somely compensated by our government. . . . Moreover, 
everybody has known for years past that in the event of 
a war between France and Germany, our troops would 
advance through Belgium.' The Belgians asked whether 
no weight should be given to national honour, inter- 
national treaties, and the rights of free peoples. ' National 



294 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

honour ! ' replied Dr. Koster. ' That is mere middle- 
class idealism, with which Socialists have nothing to do. 
As for international treaties, they don't hold in case of 
war. Does not historical materialism (the doctrine of 
Marx) teach us that the development of the proletariat is 
intimately bound up with the economic prosperity of the 
nation ? It follows that the German Socialists ought to 
support the government.' The Belgians answered that, 
for them, honour ranked above material interests, and 
that they adopted the motto of the old free towns of 
Flanders, ' Better to die of one's own free will than to 
lose one's country's freedom.' Dr. Koster, we are told, 
found this assertion so extraordinary that he called his 
colleagues to hear it repeated ; whereupon one of the 
' Belgians said bitterly that the only thing they seemed 
to possess in common was a stomach ; but on the Belgian 
side there was a heart as well, which seemed to be re- 
placed on the German side by a point of interrogation. 
This dialogue, 1 between free men and materialised serfs, 
deserves to be placed beside Thucydides' immortal 
Melian dialogue. What especially ought to be noted 
is that one of the German delegates was Karl 
Liebknecht. 

These facts go to show that autocracy, in its German 
form, has succeeded in destroying the sense of truth and 
honour of the greater part of its subjects, even of those 
among them who profess to be opposed to its principles. 
But that is not the worst of the moral debacle which this 
system, and the immoral ideals that inspire it, have 
brought about in a great nation. The atrocities which 
have been deliberately ordered by the German high 

1 Reported by the Belgians who took part in the interview, and 
printed in L'HumaniU, 20th January 1916. 



THE SUPREME ISSUE 295 

command are without parallel in the history of civilised 
warfare. But they are in accord with the principles 
which govern the German State. What makes them 
doubly horrible is that they have been willingly carried 
out by the mass of German manhood in the army and the 
navy, and even deliberately accentuated by ingenious 
refinements of cruelty, such as those which accompanied 
the murder of the crew of the Belgian Prince. It may 
very confidently be asserted that there is no other civilised 
nation whose government can be imagined ordaining such 
atrocities, or whose soldiers could be compelled to practise 
them ; and assuredly there is no self-governing land in 
which, if such things were done, the voice of protest and 
of shame would not be heard. For all time it will be 
recorded against Germany, not merely that she violated 
her honour by invading Belgium, that her authorities 
decreed wholesale slaughters of harmless non-combatants 
on land and sea, that she shamelessly discarded all the 
rules and usages of civilised warfare : these things, 
indeed, will never be forgotten ; but perhaps the most 
indelible stigma, never to be wiped out by all the lapse of 
time, will be the simple fact that public rejoicings were 
organised, and holidays granted to school-children, to 
celebrate the sinking of the Lusitania and the cold- 
blooded murder of eleven hundred unarmed civilians, 
including many women and children. This was a revela- 
tion of national moral which for sheer hideousness can 
never possibly be exceeded ; it seems to open a window 
into hell, and show us a carnival of fiends. This appalling 
revival of ape-like delight in mere destruction, this savage 
exultation in the power to inflict pain, among a people 
long known for their kindliness, can be attributed to no 
other cause than the influence of a system of government 



296 NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

and social organisation, and to the deliberate cultivation 
and inculcation of the worship of brute force, the deliber- 
ate assertion that all moral obligations may be disregarded 
if they seem to stand in the way of power. 

Because the Prussian creed defied and repudiated the 
enlarging conceptions of justice to which modern civilisa- 
tion has given birth, it has been forced to go further yet, 
and to repudiate the simplest principles of honour, 
decency and humanity upon which civilisation rests ; and 
it is not only in defence of the most enlightened political 
ideas of the modern world, but in defence of the most 
rudimentary principles of morality, that the free peoples 
find themselves called upon to fight. The subjects of 
this incomparably efficient and scientific government, 
having been blinded by materialism to the things that 
make humanity worthy of respect, find themselves at 
issue with the moral judgment of the whole world, and 
cannot understand why ; they find themselves regarded, 
not by their enemies only, with a mixture of wonder, fear, 
and loathing for which even the most unqualified victory 
would be but a poor compensation. For they have 
proved, with a fullness hitherto unexemplified in history, 
that it is possible for a nation, as for a man, to lose its 
soul in the hope of gaining the whole world. It would be 
a bad bargain even if the price were paid in full. But 
what if it is not paid ! 

Self-government has not yet won its victory. Even if 
it emerges successfully from the ordeal of war, there lies 
before it a still more terrible ordeal in the coming labours 
of reconstruction, which will assuredly lead to grave 
troubles and much bitterness of feeling. The systems of 
self-government, as we have hitherto known them, may 
not stand the strain of the immensely increased responsi- 



THE SUPREME ISSUE 297 

bilities which will necessarily fall upon the State ; and if 
the anticipation of future war is added to the strain, we 
may well witness a temporary collapse of the system in 
some, perhaps in all, of the States wherein it has been 
painfully established. But whatever troubles we may 
see, the ideal of self-government can never again fail to 
command the assent of all good men. For the rival ideal, 
in spite of its material efficiency, has revealed itself as 
morally bankrupt, the foe of all that is noblest in man. 
This service, at least, the German crime has rendered : 
it has identified the idea of self-government with the 
ideas of justice and of humanity. A century ago, or 
even fifty years ago, when self-government was as yet 
untried in any but a few States, it was still possible to 
assert, as the eighteenth-century philosophers had as- 
serted, that enlightened despotism might best assure the 
moral advancement of men. That view has been for 
ever destroyed by the action and the effects of the most 
intelligent and enlightened autocracy which the world 
has ever seen. And though we have learnt to be humble 
about democracy, though we have realised that it needs 
long training before it can work well, and though we know 
well the mistakes, stupidities and crudities of which it 
may be guilty, we have learnt also that it is safer and 
wiser, in the complex affairs of our modern world, to trust 
to the guidance of the Spirit that broods over the shifting 
and conflicting thoughts of free men, than to leave our 
fortunes to the guidance of any single dominating tradi- 
tion or of any knot of irresponsible rulers. Even should 
victory attend the army of Germany in this war, the 
cause of autocracy is a lost cause, because it can never 
survive the blows which Germany itself has struck at it. 



INDEX 



Abdul Hamid, overthrow of, 252 ; 
character, 253. 

Act of Settlement (1700), 25, 26, 27. 

Agrarian revolution period, 63. 

Agriculture, political importance 
of, destroyed, 64. 

Alexander i. (Russia), 53. 

Alexander n. (Russia), 194. 

Alexander, King (Serbia), 241 ; 
policy of, 242 ; murder of, 230, 
242. 

Alsace-Lorraine, Germany's atti- 
tude towards, 182. 

America, North, revolution in, 
effect of, on self-government, 
34 ; French aid in, 48. See also 
United States of America and 
South America. 

Anarchism, German, 112; Russian, 
246; Bakunin Association (1868), 
112. 

Anarchy, in Russia (1905), 248. 

Anti-Combination Acts (1799), 
(1800), 64; repeal of (1825), 67. 

Anti-Corn Law agitation, 167. 

Arabia, 254. 

Aragon, Cortes of, 12. 

Aristocracy, reason for supre- 
macy of, 24 ; in mid-Victorian 
period, 71. See also Gentry, 
landed, and Land. 

Aristotle, on small governments, 
7 ; on civic disunity, fatal to 
self-government, 8 ; on the 
middle class, 75. 

Armenia, 254. 

Army, control of, important factor 
in the State, Delbruck cit., 26; 
power of, deliberately fostered 
in pre - war Europe, 231 ; 
Europe v. Germany on question 
of (1914-1918), 235; English, 



early system, 17, first state 
control of, 25 ; German power 
of, in politics, 91, 92 ; Landtag's 
resistance to increase in, 123-4. 
See also Militarism. 

Army Acts, German, socialist sup- 
port of, 238 ; prelude to war 
234. 

Athens, democracy in, 8. 

' August Union ' of European 
Powers, 66, 69. 

Ausgleich, Austrian (1867), 116, 
139. 

Austria-Hungary, annexation of 
Bosnia, 231, 242, German 
cause of, 235 ; constitution of, 
modern history and develop- 
ment, 122, 132-42, (1860) 
futile reform, 132, (1867) 
Ausgleich, 116, 134, 139, 
243, (1883), (1896) 243, (1906) 
137, (1907) 243; German in- 
fluence in, 138, 139, 141, 
232 ; war with Germany, 113 ; 
Bismarck's instigation, 125, 
Italian relations with, 83, 84, 
war with (1859), 113; national 
spirit poor in, 9, crushing of, 
109 ; provincial estates in, 13 ; 
revolutionary movements, 78, 
94 ; socialism in, 78, effect of 
French revolution, transitory, 
80-3 ; Serbia, pre-war control of, 
by, 241-2 ; and Great War, 
pre-war decade of unrest, 243. 

Autocracy, theory of, favourable 
to militarist governments, 172 ; 
dependence of, on armaments, 
234 ; twentieth-century estima- 
tion of, 276 ; effect of, on 
national moral, 294 ; in Great 
War, moral defeat and moment- 
299 



300 



NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 



ous issue of, 281-3, 297 ; German 
aim, 225, apparent success, 228, 
ultimate result, 193, challenge 
to world, 284, 285-7 ; Russian, 
work of Zemstva, crippled by, 
193, 284. 
Autonomy, municipal, in mediaeval 
England, 20. 

Bagehot, William, on British 
government (1868), 35 ; on in- 
creased franchise, 152 ; criti- 
cism of English Constitution, 
153-7 ; mistaken view of future 
of self-government, 168. 

Bakunin, Michael, 112. 

Balkans, constitutional changes 
in the (1843 1878), 117, 119, 
122; wars (1912) and (1913), 
231 ; League, German luin of, 
234. 

Bank of England, growth of com- 
mercial power shown by, 24. 

Bavaria, under the Empire (1871), 
130, 132. 

Beaconsfield. See Disraeli. 

Bebel, Ferdinand, social democrat 
party led by, 112 ; on militar- 
ism, cit., 239. 

Beesley, Professor, 104. 

Belgian Prince, murdered crew 
of, political significance of, 294. 

Belgium, French revolutionary 
influence on, liberal move- 
ments, 48, 69, failure of, 70 ; 
German war atrocities in, 178 ; 
self-government in, modern, 
122 ; socialism in, German in- 
trigues (1914), 293; war, the, 
moral effect of, in, 289-90. 

Bentham, Jeremy, 71. 

Bern, early socialism in, 78. 

v. Bismarck, Graf Otto, career, 
125-32 ; character and hold of, 
on German public, 163; despotic 
rule of, imperial executive, 
supreme, over party majorities, 
132, 273-4 ; estimation of, in 
future, 82 ; aliens, policy to- 
ward, 182 ; Austrian policy of, 
125 ; industrial encouragement, 
185 ; insurance, State, scheme 
for, 183; nationalism of, 110; 



press censorship, 191, 192 ; 
Roman Church, conflict with, 
178 ; socialism, 179, fear of, 
180, in State, aim of, 183. 

Blanc, Louis, socialist doctrine 
of, 99 ; on capitalism, 103. 

Bohemia, political status of, 137. 

Bolingbroke, Lord (1678-1751), 
party government system at- 
tacked, 28. 

Boroughs, mediaeval, trade in, 14. 

Bosnia, annexation of (1908), 140, 
230, 235, 242. 

Boulanger, General, 198. 

Breslau university, tyranny in, 187. 

Briand, 202. 

Bright, John, electorate appeal, 1 67. 

Britain, Chartist movement, 78, 
constitution of, 62, after (1848) 
revolution, 83, 93, modern 
Parliamentary procedure, 122, 
147-9, after Reform Act (1867), 
151-68, 205-26; colonisation 
from, 36-7 ; educational reform 
(1902), 263 ; franchise, extension 
of (1867), 1, 116, 169; French 
Revolution, effect of, in, 48 ; 
House of Lords, twentieth-cen- 
tury powers of, 266 ; labour, 
interests of, safeguarded, 64 ; for- 
mation of Labour Party, 263 ; 
liberal revolution (1830) and 
middle class control, result of, 
57, 71-7, 80 ; party system of 
government, 157-66, discon- 
tent with, 61, 63-5, twentieth- 
century criticism, 222, 256; pros- 
perity of, in mid-nineteenth 
century, 72, 73, 159; Reform 
Act (1867), 116,(1884), 207; self- 
government of, 9, 18-33, 51, 53, 
in voluntary growth, 11-12, 34, 
original aims, 226, period of 
struggle from (1830), 69-77, 
capitalists in favour of, 94, 
nineteenth - century develop- 
ment, 59, 60, twentieth century, 
263, foreign estimation of, 
after Conference of Verona, 
67, American misconception 
of, 40, 41, 42 ; socialism in, 
176, 206, anti-nationalistic atti- 
tude, 238 ; war methods, volun- 



INDEX 



301 



teer system, 290. See also 
England. 

Brussels, early socialism in, 78. 

Bulgaria, reformed constitution 
of (1878), 118. 

v. Bulow, Prinz, on idealism in 
politics, 45. 

Bundesrat (1871 onwards), status 
of, in German constitution, 
128-9. 

Bureaucracy, modern methods 
and development of, 18, 121 ; 
Austrian, 133, 138, 139 ; British, 
growth of, mid - Victorian, 
155-7, twentieth century, 219, 
270 ; French, pre-revolution, 50, 
under Louis Philippe, 74, after 
Napoleon I., 65, under Napoleon 
ni., 85, modern efficiency and 
control of, 148-9 ; German, 62, 
87, 88, 122, power of (1850), 
89, power of, under Bismarck, 
123-32, education controlled 
by, 188, final system of, 172- 
92 ; Russian, exposure of, by 
Japanese war, 246, revival 
after first Duma, 249, German 
nature and influence of, 251, 
power of, in autocratic govern- 
ment, 193. 

Burke, Edmund, on self-govern- 
ment as British heritage, 34. 

Cabet, Etienne, 99. 

Cabinet, control, institution of, 
27 ; position of, in British 
politics (Bagehot), 155. 

Canada, self-government insti- 
tuted in, 72. 

Canning, George, on powers' tyran- 
nical settlement after Napoleon, 
cit., 67 ; on self government, 
69 ; on political value of 
American republics, cit., 69. 

Capital, Marx's war against, 101 ; 
future of, 104 ; socialist's con- 
ception of, 172, 174. 

Capital {Das Kapital), 100. 

Capitalism, Marx's conception of 
evil of, 103, 104 ; socialist 
theory of, 236 ; history of, 237 ; 
industrial, growing importance 
of, 64 ; power of, politically 



exaggerated, 259 ; v. social 
welfare, 265. 

Carinthia, political status of, 137. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 97. 

Carnot, Pres., 201. 

Castile, Cortes of, 12. 

Cavour, Count C. di, 84. 

Charles v. (Spain), 12. 

Charles X. (France), absolutism 
upheld by, 73- 

Chartist movement, liberty of, 
78 ; against individualism, 98. 

Chauvinism, 55. 

China, self-government, in first 
steps, 1, 61. 

Christian socialism, growth of, 97. 

Church, the Roman, mediaeval 
political power of, 11 ; loss of 
political power, 15 ; under 
Napoleon in., 86 ; as political 
factor, French rejection of, 
262 ; Protestant, as political 
factor, overthrow of, threatened 
in England, 265. See also Re- 
ligion. 

Civilisation, western, and self- 
government, 2 ; European, 
modern world domination of, 241. 

Civil service, competitive examina- 
tion for, institution of, 156, 161. 

Class distinctions, mediaeval, 13-16; 
privileges abolished by National 
Assembly, 50 ; abolished by 
Napoleon, 52 ; after English 
Agrarian Revolution, 64. 

Class, middle, after 1830, rule of, 
confirmed in England, France, 
and Belgium, 69-77 ; loss of 
power (1832-1867), 76; Dutch 
franchise, 84 ; growth of, result 
of political changes, 59, 96 ; 
industrial control of, 111. 

Class-war, Marx's creed, incite- 
ment to, 101, 112, 105, 236; 
encouraged by Germany, 112 ; 
and by war-party (1914-1917), 
286; inevitable in social progress, 
102-3 ; effect of great financial 
combines on, 174 ; distrust of 
government, fostered by, 259 ; 
social welfare v. military ex- 
penditure, 265. 

Class, working. See Labour. 



302 



NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT* 



Cobden, Richard, on industrial 
wealth and peace, 186. 

Colonial Office, mid-Victorian, 
power of officials of, 156. 

Colonies, British, self-government 
in, 23, 72. 

Colonisation, factor in incitements 
of Great War, 232. 

Commerce. See Trade. 

' Communist Manifesto,' 100 ; 
mob's demands, 145 ; Union 
(1847), 100. 

Confederation, German (1815), 
form of government of (1848), 
overthrown and restored, 81 ; 
Diet, on self-government, 67, 68. 

Co-operation, growth of, as poli- 
tical factor, 56 ; theory of, 
Owen's scheme, 98 ; Marx's 
doctrine fundamentally opposed 
to, 101, 104. 

Co-operative societies, step toward 
self-government, 80. 

Corruption, political, 28. 

Cortes, the Estates, in Spain, 12. 

Coup d'fitat (1851), 142, 146. 

Crime, in Germany, pre-war vio- 
lence, 275-6 ; Great War besti- 
ality, 276 ; juvenile, pre-war 
increaso, 276. 

Croats, the, racial difficulties in 
Austria, 135, 140, 244 ; Magyar 
tyranny over, 136, 244. 

Cronstadt, street fighting (1917), 
footnote 145. 

Czechs, the, representation of, in 
Reichsrat, 137 ; hostilities of, to 
Austrian government and Ger- 
man influence, 244. 

Das Kapital, 100. 

v. Delbriick, M. F. R., on army 
control, cit., 24 ; on military 
government, cit., 92 ff. 

Democracy as political ideal, nine- 
teenth-century growth of, 54-62, 
67-8, 70 ; civic, in small states, 
8 ; financial combines, deterrent 
to, 174 ; Marx inconsistent to, 
101 ; party system help to, 164 ; 
revolutionary effects of, 57 ; 
socialist attitude towards, 237 ; 
war difficulties of, 172, 257 ; 



world order of, as momentou9 
issue of Great War, 240, 280 ; 
American, 48 ; French, 46, 50, 
51, 80 ; German followers false 
to, 293 ; Russian, 246 ; Serbian, 
242 ; Swiss, 7, 18. 

Denmark, reformed constitu- 
tion (1849), 84 ; parliamentary 
system established (1864), 113 ; 
parliament of (1866), 115 ; re- 
turn to Prussian system (1863), 
93 ; German relations with, 182 ; 
Norway withdrawn from govern- 
ment of, 66. 

Derby, Earl of (fourteenth), hold 
of, on British mid-Victorian 
public, 163. 

Despotism, modern growth of, 
18, 29 ; socialist aims, possible 
form of, 105-6 ; Austrian, 133 ; 
English, Tudor times, 19 ; 
German, 86-93, 123-32, 229, 
pre-war discontent with, 273-4 ; 
Russian, 247 ; Turkish, 253, 254. 

Diet of German Confederation, 
power of, representation re- 
fused by, 67, 68. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, hold of, on 
British public, 163. 

Dissolution, power of, importance 
of, to government, 41. 

Divine right of kings, Prussian 
adherence to, 187. 

Division of power, executive and 
Parliament, fallacy of, 26, 28, 
85, 155. 

Don Pacifico, and Palmerston, 153. 

Dreyfus affair, 198, 199, 200. 

Duma, institution of, 1, 248; 
futility of (1917), 283-4. 

East India Company, and growth 
of merchants' power, 24. 

Edward I. (England). 13. 

Education, as political facto?-. 37 ; 
in political methods, necessary, 
7 ; compulsory, 165 ; American, 
37 ; British system, 37, 165 ; 
French system, 166 ; German 
system, 166 ; Acts (1870), 165 ; 
(1875), 165. 

Egypt, government of, twentieth- 
century discontent, 61 ; self- 



INDEX 



ao3 



government in, desired, 2, 254- 
6 : German influence in, pre- 
war, 234. 

Elector, the Great, Friedrich 
Wilhelm of Brandenburg, 13. 

Election (1784), self-government, 
25. 

Elizabeth, Queen, self-government, 
19. 

Employers' Liability Act, 208. 

England, army system, early, 17 ; 
colonisation from, seventeenth- 
century self-government, 22 ; 
despotism in, Tudor, 19 ; in- 
sular position, advantageous, in 
early times, 16 ; Justices of 
the Peace, power of, in early 
times, 16 ; Parliament, develop- 
ment of, self-government, 13-15, 
18-33. See also Britain. 

English Constitution (Bagehot), 
153-7. 

Engineers, Amalgamated Societv 
of (1851), 106. 

Enver, Bey, power of, in Young 
Turk movement, 253. 

Estates, the, constitution of, 11-15. 

Europe, governments on British 
model in, 59, 111-12 ; revolu- 
tionary periods in, 58-61 ; self- 
government in, Powers' agree- 
ment to (1815), 66, Powers' 
repudiation of, 67, 68, 69 ; 
world domination of political 
ideas and civilisation of, 175, 
254, 279. 



Factory Act (1834), 96. 

Ferdinand vn. (Spain), self-govern- 
ment abolished by, 66. 

Feudalism, main factors in, 11. 

' Finance, High,' modern develop- 
ment of, 173, 174 ; dangers of, 
174. 

Finland, German influence in, 
pre-war, 234. 

Flanders, mediaeval, self-govern- 
ment in, 6. 

Fourier, Francois M. C, socialist 
scheme of, 99. 

France, constitution of, 45, 61, 63, 
65, 73, 81, 256, (1791) 52, (1822) 



67, (1830) 73, (1848) 85-6, 93, 
146, (1860) Napoleon in.'s 
changes, 143, (1870) rule during 
war, 143, (1871) Third Republic, 
113,117,144-50,198-205; bureau- 
cracy, 65 ; colonisation system 
of, early, 22; Communist revolu- 
tion, 100, 145; Empire, second, 
reactionary rule, 81, 113; democ- 
racy, spirit of, in, 73 ; Franco- 
Prussian War, 113, 143; Ger- 
many's attitude towards pre- 
war, 234, 236, military menace, 
171, Alsace-Lorraine, 182, in- 
citing friction with England, 
235 ; industrial unrest in twen- 
tieth century, 259-61 ; middle- 
class power, 81 ; modern dis- 
content with government, 61, 
63, 65, 256 ; revolution in, 
spirit of, 69, 73, 100, 145; 
Revolution, The (1789), self- 
government after, 34, 35, influ- 
ence of, on foreign countries, 52 ; 
(1848), 80, 100, footnote 145, 
Blanc's contribution to, 99, 
(1871), footnote 145; self- 
government in, development of, 
45-150, 176 ; Third Republic 
onwards, 117, 120, 122, 141-50, 
198,205; socialism, 176,201,261, 
pre-war German intrigue, 236 ; 
States-general, 12 ; universal 
suffrage (1848), 85-6, 93. 

Franchise, extension of, 1, 11-17, 
26-19, (1881) 169; Prussian 
(1906), 245. See also Suffrage. 

Franco-Austrian War (1859), 113, 
123 125-7. 

Prussian War (1871), 113; 

effect of, on France, 117, 141; 
143. 

Frankfort (1848), National As- 
sembly at, demand for self- 
government, 81 ; (1866), incor- 
poration of, with Prussia, 127. 

Freemen, Assemblies of, 21. 

Free Trade, adoption of, 71. 

Friedrich n., the Great (Prussia), 
absolute government of, cit., 30, 
31 ; State welfare policy of, 182. 

Wilhelm I. (Prussia), policy 

of, 87. 



304 



NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 



Friedrich Wilhelm in. (Prussia), 

promise of self-government, 52 ; 

not fulfilled by, 66, 89. 
■ Wilhelm iv. (Prussia), history 

of representative government 

under, 89. 
Friendly societies, step towards 

self-government, 79. 

Galicia, autonomy in, 137, 242. 

Gambetta, cit., on religion, 199. 

Geneva, democracy, early, 7. 

Gentry, landed, power of, early 
nineteenth century, 21 ; seven- 
teenth century, 23, 29. 

George in. (England), party 
government attacked by, 28. 

Gerard, James W., Kaiser's view 
of international law, 279. 

Germany, anarchism in, 112; in 
Austria, influence of, 116, 137, 
138, 141, 235, war with, 113, 123, 
125 ; autocracy, complete, twen- 
tieth-century intrigues, 177-93, 
195, 224, 272; Bismarck's rule, 
period of, 125-32 ; brutality of 
character, and in war, 287-9, 
294, intellectuals' disclaimer of 
(1915), 292; Bundesrat (1871), 
128 ; bureaucracy, 59, 60, 62, 
122-32, temporarily overthrown 
(1848), 81-3; constitution of, 
modern, 59, 60, 120, 122, 123- 
32, 176 ; crime in, pre-war 
statistics, 275 ; education in, 
189, state tyranny over, 186- 
90: empire formed (1871), 59, 
110, 116, 125-32, political effect 
of, 109 ; Franco -Prussian War, 
143 ; French Revolution, tem- 
porary effect of, 52, 80, 81 ; 
Hanover and Hesse annexed, 
127 ; industrial development, 
176, Bismarck's policy, 185 ; 
Landtag (1850), 123; liberal 
movements, failure of (1830), 
69, (1848) 82, (1866) 123, 124, 
pre-war discontent at despotic 
rule, 274 ; literature of, influ- 
ence of state control on intel- 
lectual development, 190-2, 292 ; 
Marx's influence in, 112 ; medi- 
aeval government in, 6, 18 ; 



militarism in, 170-2, 190, re- 
sistance of, 124 ; nationalism 
in, 110 ; in Poland, policy of 
(1863), 126 ; press control in, 
by State, 190 ; Reichstag (1871), 
128 ; religion in, Lutheran, 
state-controlled, 178, Roman- 
ism, power of, 178, Bismarck's 
conflict with, 178-9 ; in Russia, 
pre-war preparations, 251 ; 
Schleswig and Holstein, an- 
nexation of, 126 ; secret service 
of, pre-war, 233 ; self-govern- 
ment in, futility of, 29, 66, 
111 ; in Serbia, influence of, 
241, 242 ; socialism in, 176, 
236 ; useless majority, 237-40 ; 
twentieth-century demands, 273- 
6: social democrats of, 113; 
false to ideals, in war (1914), 
293 ; social organisation in, 
182-3 ; in Turkey, 251 ; war 
preparations, 234, 257 ; in- 
citements to Great War, deli- 
berate, 234 ; Great War pre- 
monitions, repudiation of world's 
civilisation and ideals, 279-84, 
moral defeat of, in, 297. See 
also Prussia and Prussianism. 

Gild system, self-government, pro- 
moted by, 21. 

Gladstone, William Ewart, elec- 
torate recognised as political 
factor by, 167-8 ; hold of, on 
British public, 163. 

Government. See Local Govern- 
ment and Self-Government. 

Gotha conference (1875), 179. 

Great War. See under War. 

Greece, ancient, self-government 
in, 6 ; absolute monarchy in 
(1843), 93 ; self-government in 
(1863), 117; Constantino's fear of 
self-go vernment,283 ; revolution, 
against Persia, 229, (1909), 231 ; 
Great War, treachery of, 283. 

Grotius, Hugo, equality of man, 
46. 

Guizot, F. P. G., government 
under, perfection of, 76. 

Hague Conference (1899), Ger- 
man attitude at, 171,(1907), 235 



INDEX 



305 



Hanover, Prussian annexation of, 
127. 

Hapsburg dynasty, absolutism 
of, in Austrian constitution, 135, 
140, 141. 

Hare, Thomas, proportional repre- 
sentation, 154. 

Henry viii. (England), form of 
self-government under, 19. 

Hesse, Prussian annexation of, 
127. 

History, Marx's conception of, 
102. 

Hohenzollern monarchy, early 
greatness of, 13 ; despotism of, 
88-92 ; consolidation of des- 
potic empire under, 123-32. 

Holland, self-government, early 
times, 23, modern, 122 ; colon- 
isation system, early, 22 ; con- 
stitution, 63, 169, reform of 
(1848), 83, 93 ; Belgium, control 
of, lost to, 70 ; franchise, exten- 
sion of, 169. 

Home Office, mid-Victorian power 
of officials in, 156. 

Rule Bill, political unrest 

fostered by, 213, 265. 

House of Commons, constitution 
of, seventeenth century, 23, 
democracy in, spread of doc- 
trines of, 57 ; financial control 
in, 265 ; majority, necessity 
for cabinet, 27 ; national re- 
presentation in, limited, 267-70 ; 
party svstem, control of, 157- 
66, loss "of, 214, 

of Lords, seventeenth-cen- 
tury constitution of, 23 ; posi- 
tion of clergy in, 15 ; dissatis- 
faction with, 209, 266 ; reform, 
difficulties of, 267-70. 

Hungary, lack of political liberty 
in, 6 ; constitution of, 1 7, re- 
form in (1867), 116; national 
spirit wanting, 9 ; Magyar 
tyranny over, pre-war, 244 ; 
race difficulties in (1867), 136. 
See also Austria-Hungary. 

Hyde Park railings incident, 151. 

Imperialism, European, rapid 
growth and rivalry of, 175. 



Income tax, U.S.A. struggles for, 
39. 

Independent Labour Party, Eng- 
lish, aims of, 238. 

India, German influence in, pre- 
war, 234 ; self-government in, 
demand for, 2, 254-6 ; modern 
desire for, 61, aim of, in future, 
72 ; slight concession towards, 
265. 

Individualism, theory of, 95-6 ; 
Marx's substitution for, failure, 
105-6 ; v. socialism, 97. 

Industrialism, growth of, 56-7, 60, 
continental, 111; liberty politi- 
cally co-incident with, 94 ; 
modern methods of , 173 ; middle 
class power caused by, 70 ; 
public welfare movements in, 
262 ; self-government in, 174 ; 
as State policy in Germany, 
183-5 ; trade unions, contin- 
ental, inexperienced, 233 ; pre- 
war unrest, 231. 

Insurance, sickness, 264 ; Bis- 
marck's policy, 183 ; unem- 
ployment, 264. 

International law, 2 ; violation of, 
German, 280, 295. 

Workmen's Association 

(1864), 112. 

Ireland, Home Rule Bill, 213, 
266 ; German influence in, 233, 
272 ; revolution in, 272. 

Italy, constitution of, mediaeval, 
6, 18 ; modern criticism, 256 ; 
Franco-Austrian war (1859), 
123 ; French Revolution, effect 
of, in, 48, 80, 81-3 ; liberal 
movements (1830), 69; revolu- 
tion in, 94 ; self-government in, 
111, 122 ; mediaeval, 6, fear 
of, by Anti-Allv party in Great 
War, 283 ; Turkish War (1910), 
231 ; union in, political effect of, 
59, 109, 110 ; War, Great, issue 
of, stand for liberty, 283, 290. 

Japan, self-government in, 1, 
European type of, 169-70. 

Jaures, Jean, pacifism of, 238. 

Jew, the, as political factor, 100 ; 
Russian, 248. 



306 



NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 



Joseph II. (Germany), government 
by, 30-1. 

'Junkers,' the, position of, in 
Prussia, 87, 125-32. 

Justices of the Peace, mediaeval, 
English voluntary self-govern- 
ment, 16, 20, 21; modern, 207. 

Kaiser, the, power of, in Ger- 
many, 128-9. See also under 
individual names. 

Karageorgevitch family, in Serbia, 
242. 

Kartel, Germany's commercial 
encouragement, 184. 

Kingsley, Charles, on labour's 
interests, 97. 

Koster, Herr Dr., denunciation of 
Belgian socialists, cit., 293, 294. 

Kulturkampf, the, 178. 

Labour Exchanges, institution 
of, 264. 

Party, growth of, 56, 59, 64 ; 

after repeal of Anti-Combination 
Acts, 67 ; artisan movement, 
79 ; Blanc's theory of social 
reform, 99 ; danger in, 257 ; 
future of, 104 ; Independent, 
238 ; Marx's doctrine, 102-3, 
108 ; parliamentary recognition 
of (1906), 263 ; suffrage ex- 
tension (1867), 116; trade 
unions, 106. 

Lamartine, Alphonse, policy of, 85. 

Land, decrease of small pro- 
prietors, 24 ; yeoman holders, 
decline of, 63. 

Landowners, former supremacy of, 
21, 23, 24, 29 ; local govern- 
ment control of, 64. 

' Landowning oligarchy ' period, 
24. 

Landtag (1850) in German con- 
stitution, futility of, 123-8. 

Lassalle, Ferdinand, 112 ; on 
civilisation, cit., 239. 

Law, rule by, in civilisation, 255 ; 
political relationship to, 258 ; 
Roman perfection of, 20 ; in 
Russia (1917), danger of, 285; 
in Tudor times, 20. See also 
Rational law. 



League of Nations, 278. 

Lecky, W. E. H., on post- 
Napoleonic government per- 
fection, 75, 76. 

Lenin, Vladimir Yulianov, German 
influence on, 252. 

Leo xni., Pope, 200. 

Leopold ii. (Tuscany), political 
ideal of, 30 1. 

Liberalism, British, 209 ; and na- 
tionalism, 55; French, persistent 
demand (1860-70), 143 ; Ger- 
man, defeat of, by Bismarck, 
127. See also Self-Government, 
Parliament, and Liberty. 

Liberty, dogmas of, 34-53 ; in- 
dustrial development and, 56 ; 
mob law mistaken for, 285 ; 
revolutionary spirit incited by, 
33 ; self-government ideal, 5, 
282 ; war, effect of, 5 ; Ameri- 
can aims, 44, 36 ; British, mid- 
Victorian, 48, 153 ; French, 
effect of Revolution on, 46, 52, 
54 ; lost under Napoleon in., 
142 ; German want of, 186-7, 
190-2 ; Grecian, overthrow of 
Persia, 229 ; in India, high 
degree of, 6 ; Russian demand 
for (1904), 246 

Liebknecht, Karl, apostasy of 
(1914), 294. 

Lincoln, Abraham, on demo- 
cratic government, cit., 47. 

Local Government system, devel- 
opment of, 166-7,207, 208; ex- 
tension, eighteenth century, 25. 
Board Act (1871), 167. 



London, early socialism in, exiles 

foster, 68, 78. 
Louis xiv. (France), method of 

rule of, 29-30. 
Louis xv. (France), government 

under, 29. 
Philippe (King of the French), 

freedom of thought under, 73, 

74. 
Lutheran Church, German State 

control of, 178. 

Macchiavelli, Niccolo, policy 
of, and modern Prussianism, 
187. 



INDEX 



307 



Macedonia, 231. 

Macmahon, Pres., 198. 

Magna Carta, basis of American 
liberty, 39. 

Magyars, the, tyrannical majority 
of, in Hungary, 116, 135, 244. 

Majority, parliamentary system 
of, 27. 

Malthus, Thomas R., 71. 

' Manchesterism,' age of, 94. 

Marx, Karl, career, 100, 180, 181 ; 
character and reputation of, 
101. 

Marx, theories of, British non- 
acceptance of, 107, 153 ; Euro- 
pean countries influenced by, 
60, 112 ; International Work- 
men's Association, inaugural 
address, 112 ; labour's concep- 
tion of middle-class control, 
112 ; revival of followers of, from 
1889, 172 ; revolutionary in- 
citement of, 233 ; in Russia, 
245 ; self-government hindered 
by teaching of, 105 ; universal 
extension of teaching of, 99-107, 
176 ; contortion of, to support 
war, 294, peace aims annulled 
by, 236. 

Maurice, Frederick, on labour's 
interests, 97. 

Mazzini, Giuseppe, democratic 
nationalism of, 55 ; in Britain, 
153. 

Merchants, autonomous, in feudal 
times, 1 ; foreign, growth of 
power of, seventeenth century, 
23, 29. 

Mercier, Cardinal, 179. 

Meetings, public, value of, as 
factor in politics, 167-8. 

Mesopotamia, 254. 

Metternich, Prinz, reactionary 
government overthrown, 81. 

Mikado, The, impaired absolutism 
of, 169, 170. 

Milan, King (Serbia), 241. 

Militarism, effect of, on national 
moral, 193, 295 ; insidious 
growth of, in European peace 
periods, 170-3 ; Austrian (after 
1860), 133, 139 ; French Napol- 
eonic, 49, 51 ; German slavery 



to, 190, final ascendancy of 
(1871), 130-1, preparations for 
war, 257 

Mill, John Stuart, 71 ; on demo- 
cratic franchise, 152 ; criticism 
of Representative Government, 
153-7 ; on self-government, 168 ; 
uneducated power feared by, 
258. 

Millerand, M., 202. 

Mob, law, 100 ; French Commune 
(1871), 145; action of, Hyde 
Park railing incident (1867), 
151 ; Russian spirit of (1905), 
247, (1917), footnote 145. 

Moldavia, representative council 
(1856), 117. 

Monarchy, absolute, mediaeval, 
18 ; as philosopher's ideal gov- 
ernment, 29-30 ; modern, with 
local self-government, 21. 

Monroe Doctrine (1823), institu- 
tion of, 69. 

Montesquieu, C, Baron De, on 
English government, 26 ; divi- 
sion of power, doctrine, 85 ; in- 
fluence of political views of, in 
America, 40, 42. 

Morocco, rising in, 231, 234. 

Miiller, Herr, socialist and Ger- 
man war-agent (1914), 238. 

Municipal Reform Act (1855), 71. 

Mutiny Act (1689), scope of, 25. 

Naples, Liberal revolution in, 
68. 

Napoleon I., autocracy of, 6, 7. 

Napoleon in., autocracy of, 7, 
141-3 ; despotism of, 83-5, 93, 99. 

National Assembly, Paris, 17 ; 
class privileges abolished by, 50. 

Nationalism as political aim, era 
of, European, 54, 77, 108-68; 
constitutional stability result 
of, 109 ; factor in Great War, 
2, 279. 

Nationality, loyal spirit of, social- 
ist repudiation of, 232 ; sdli- 
government, desire for, result, 
9, 113 ; in Austria, Balkans, 
Hungary, 2, 31, 232; Egypt, 
255 ; India, 255. 

Navy, German, growth of, 234. 



308 



NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 



Netherlands, the, States-general 
in, 21. 

Nicholas ii. (Russia), revolutionary 
demands, treatment of, 247-8. 

Nietzsche, Friedrich W., anti- 
Christian German followers, 177; 
predisposition to war in philo- 
sophy of , 177, 275. 

Nihilism, movement of, formation, 
78. 

North German Confederation 
(1871), 116. 

Norway, constitution of, 63 ; con- 
trolled resemblance of demo- 
cracy in, 93 ; democratic de- 
mands, in, 57, 63, 65, 66; 
Danish power in, 122 ; parlia- 
ment in, relations with Sweden, 
115, 231. 

O'CONNELL, DAKIEL, 160. 

Old Age Pensions Act, 208, 264. 
' Organisation de Travail,' 99. 
Orleans monarchy, in France, 73. 
Otho, King, Greece, 93. 
Owen, Robert, practical socialism 
of, 98, 99. 

Pacifism, pre-war movement, 236; 
war aims, mistaken by adher- 
ents of, 278. 

Palmerston, Lord, and Don 
Pacifico, 153 ; complete hold 
over British public, 163. 

Paris, socialism in, exiles foster, 
68, 78 ; revolutionary fighting 
in, 70, 80, 145. 

Commune (1871), 145. 

Council of (1856), 117. 

Parliament, government by, de- 
velopment of, 13-15, 23 ; execu- 
tive under control of, 26, 122, 
141-68; minority, in some 
countries, in control of, 122, 
132-41 ; political training 
necessary, 245, 247, 248 ; 
twentieth -century criticism, 61, 
212, 256-72, 277 ; socialism, 
cause of difficulties in, 176 ; 
variation in Upper and Lower 
Chambers, 119; war, cause of 
difficulties in, 172. See also 
Self -Government. 



Parliament Act (1911), 266. 

Parnell, Charles, 213. 

Party politics, 26-8 ; British 
system, 157-66 ; American, 
43 ; French, 74. 

Patriot King (Bolingbroke), 28. 

Paulsen, Friedrich, on evils of Ger- 
man pre-war despotism, cit., 275. 

Pays d'etat, French provincial 
government, 13. 

Peace, self-government a factor in, 
4 ; ' armed,' in nineteenth cen- 
tury, 170, 173 ; Cobden's ideal, 
failure, 186 ; Kaiser as expo- 
nent of, 239 ; socialist aim, 236-9. 

Congress (1899), 171, (1907), 

235. 

Peel, Sir Robert, government by, 
perfection of, 76 ; party break 
from Tories, 158. 

Pension, Old Age, Act, 268, 264. 

Persia, despotism in, 229 ; self- 
government attempted in, 1, 61. 

Philip n. (Spain), 12. 

Philosophy, in French politics, 49. 

Piedmont, liberal revolution in, 68. 

Pitt, William, 28. 

Plehve, murder of, 246. 

Poland, partition (1772),30; liberal 
movements (1830), 69 ; parlia- 
mentary system of Alexander i., 
66, modern, 63 ; Austrian in- 
trigues in, 243; Galicia, Austrian, 
Poles in, 137 ; Germany's atti- 
tude towards, 182 ; Bismarck's 
policy (1863), 126; Russia's 
treatment of, 182. 

Politics, education necessity for 
career of, 7, 118, 119, 122, 247, 
249, 254-6 ; transformation of, 
in nineteenth ce >tury, 54-62 ; 
America's isolation, 38, 45 ; 
industrial rivalry, 60 ; platform 
important, 217 ; pre-war in- 
trigues and difficulties, 231. 

Poor Law Amendment Act (1834), 
71. 

Board, mid Victorian 



power of, 156. 

Rate, in early times, 21. 

Portugal, colonisation, early, 22 ; 
parliament of, executive con- 
trolled by, 93. 



INDEX 



309 



Posen, Germany's attitude, 182. 

Possibilistes, Les, 201. 

Power, doctrine of, 282 ; triumph 
in Germany (1914-1917), 286; 
disaster, effect of, on, 5. 

Press, the, ownership of, as 
power, 258 ; distrust of govern- 
ment fostered by, 259. 

Press, Freedom of the, political 
reform, 119, 217 ; Austrian, 
refusal of, 68 ; British, 65, 67, 
96, 153 ; French, 65, partial, 
under Louis Philippe, 73 ; con- 
trolled by Napoleon in., 142 ; 
German, refusal of, 68, 125, 
190-2. 

' Proletarian,' Marx's definition 
of, 101. 

Proudhon, Joseph, 99. 

Prussia, constitution of, 86. (1850) 
futility of, 89-93, 125, 130, 
(1867), 128; Austria defeated 
by (1866), 113; Denmark de- 
feated by, 115; monarchy of, 
aims and confirmed power of, 
123, 130, 184, 225 ; national- 
ism of, 110 ; provincial Estates 
system in, 13 ; self-government, 
1848 demands, 81-3 ; (1866), 
115-16. See also Germany. 

Prussianism, development of, as 
policy, 86-93, 233 ; conflict with 
Christianity, 177 ; German phil- 
osophers' tribute to, 1 86 ; fos- 
tered by German education, 
189. 

Public meetings, growth of, as 
factor in politics, 167. 

Race, difficulties of, in politics, 
9; in Austria, 83, 133, 135, 244. 

Rational law, self-government, 
protection of, 5 ; under auto- 
cracies, 6. 

' Realism ' of Marx, 101. 

Realpolitik, Prussian theory, 101 ; 
German materialism, 187. 

Reform Act (1832), 72; (1867), 151, 
165; (1884), 206. 

Reichsrat, the, in Austria, 137. 

Reichstag, the, in Germany, bur- 
eaucractic and imperial con- 
trol (1871 onwards), 128-30. 



Religion, loss of political power, 
262; and political reform, 119; 
reactionary in France, 199; op- 
posed politically to Prussian 
form of government, 177 ; as 
war instrument in Germany, 
292 ; in Italy, 283. 

Renascence, provincial (1780- 
1830), 70, footnote 71. 

Representative Government (Mill), 
153-7. 

Representation, government by. 
See Franchise and Self-govern- 
ment. 

Resolution, Russian (1917), 284. 

Revolution, anarchist form of, 
246; ideals of, after 1830, 
78; periods of, 34-53, 58-61, 
63-107 ; pre-war, 230 ; spirit 
of, without violence, 79 ; in 
financial control, House of 
Lords' rejection of Budget, 266 ; 
State fear of self-government 
leading to, 67 ; American, 48 ; 
English (1689), 25, 260, 261 ; 
Chartist movement, 79 ; French, 
45, (1871), 108, footnote 145, 
Paris Commune (1871), 145 ; 
Greek (1863), 108 ; Polish (1863), 
108, 109 ; Russian, 244, street 
fighting in Cronstadt (1917), 
footnote 145 ; Sinn Fein (1916), 
260 ; Suffragettes, pre-war, 261 ; 
Turkish (1908), 252; Ulster, 
pre-war spirit of, 260. 

Ricardo, David, 71. 

Rome, Church of, power in Ger- 
many, Empire of, rational law 
in, 6. 

v. Roon, Graf. A. T. E., army 
reform, 123-4,126. 

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, on de- 
mocracy, 7, 88 ; influence of, 
on causes of French Revolution, 
46-7. 

Rumania, self-government in 
(1866), 117 ; German intrigues 
in (1914), 293. 

Rumans, the, position of, in Hun- 
garian Parliament, 135, 140, 
244. 

Ruskin, John, on labour's in- 
terests, 97. 



310 



NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 



Russo-Japanese War, 231 ; effect 
of, in Russia, 245 ; bureaucracy 
exposed by, 246. 

Ruthones, the, Austro-Hungarian 
tyranny over, 243. 

Russia, autocracy in, 192-6, pos- 
sible defeat of, in Great War, 
283-5 ; constitution of, reforms 
in, attempted (1815), 66, (1858) 
and (1863), 114, (1906), 231, 248; 
democracy immature, 232 ; des- 
potism of, 94 ; Duma, institu- 
tion of, 1, 248, limitations of 
(1907-1917), 249, 250 ; franchise, 
demands for, 246, 247 ; German 
influence in, 126, pre-war, 234, 
293, intrigues during Great 
War, 251 ; Hungarian attitude 
towards, 140 ; on Polish ques- 
tion, 126, 182 ; revolutions in 
(1904-1905), 231, 244-252 ; first, 
of (1917), 145, footnote 252, 284 ; 
self-government in, demand for, 
52, inception of, 1, 61, 248 ; 
socialism, anarchist type of, 78 ; 
strike, the universal (1905), 248, 
260; Tsar's liberalism (1815), 
66 ; War, the Great, moment- 
ous issue of, for, 283-5. 



St. Simon, L., Due de, socialist 
scheme of, 99. 

Salonika, pre-war importance of, 
140. 

Sardinia, in Austrian war, 110 ; 
kingdom of, beginning of Italian 
unity, 114; self-government 
pledge upheld in, 84, 93. 

Saxony, under the Empire (1871), 
130, 132. 

Scandinavia, See under Norway 
and Sweden. 

Schleswig and Holstein, Prussian 
conquest of, 126. 

Scotland, education in, 37. 

Secret service, efficiency of, as 
military factor, 234. 

Self-government, ideal of, as poli- 
tical theory, 226-8, 227-9, 
240-41,276, 281-2; on education 
boards, 166 ; officialdom pro- 
blem in, 157 ; parliamentary 



systems, criticism of, 256-72, 
276, variations in two Cham- 
bers, 119, 121 ; reforms needed 
in twentieth-century type of, 
231-3, 271-77 ; universal desire 
for, twentieth century, 275 ; 
Great War in relation to, 235, 
momentous issue of, 280 3, 
effect of, remarkable, 287-92, 
in reconstruction troubles, 296- 
7 ; Bagehot on, 153-7 ; Mill on, 
153-7. See also under names of 
countries. 

Sembat, , pacifism of, 238. 

Serbia, constitution of, reformed 
(1869), 118; Austrian domina- 
tion of, history, 241, 242; 
menace to, pro-war, 140 ; race 
jealousy of, 244 ; revolution 
in (1903), 230. 

Shire Court, 14. 

Sicily, self -governmentin ( 1 8 1 2), 66. 

Sinn Fein, movement, German in- 
fluence on, 234 ; reply to arm- 
ing in Ulster, 260. 

Skuptshina, the institution of , 118. 

Slavs, the, in Hungary, 136. 

Sleswig, 182. 

Slovaks, the, 135, 244. 

Slovenes, the, hostility of, to 
Austrian government and 
German influence, 137, 244. 

Sobranje, the, institution of, 118. 

Social Democrat Party, German, 
foundation of, 112 ; in Great 
War, 181. 

reform, twentieth century, 

British, 264; French, 262 ; Ger- 
man use of, in politics, 182. 

Socialism, beginnings of, European 
evidence of, 77 ; v. individual- 
ism, 97 ; international confer- 
ences, 172, 232, 236 ; Marx's 
aims and influence, 99-107 ; 
pre-war political mis-reading 
of, 236-40 ; syndicalist aims in, 
260 ; Belgian, German intrigues 
(1914), 293; British tyranny 
of, averted, 107 ; French, ideal- 
istic politics, 45, active in 
government, 201, 261 ; German, 
history and development of, 
179-81, party majority of, 



INDEX 



311 



273, State, 183, war party's 
use of, 285 ; Russian (1904), 
245, pre-war policy, unwise, 251, 
German influence on, 252, 285 ; 
See also Christian Socialism. 

Socialist Congresses, International, 
limited ideals of, 181, 233, 236. 

Sorel, Georges, revolutionary 
doctrines of, 259. 

South Africa, German influence 
in, 234, 265. 

African War, pre-disposi- 

tion to Great War, 230. 

America, self-governing re- 
publics, 69. 

Spain, constitution of, mediaeval, 
12; monarchv(1869), 118,(1874), 
122, 118, republic (1873), 118, 
modern methods in, 93 ; Bour- 
bon despotism in, overthrow 
of (1834), 118; colonisation, 
early, 22 ; liberal revolution 
in, 68 ; self-government in 
(1812), 52, 66, fear of, in 
modern state, 283. 

State, the, conception of, under 
self-government and under des- 
potism, 30, 31, 32 ; socialist 
conception of duty of, 97 ; 
Robert Owen's scheme, 98 ; 
French ideal, 49 ; German 
ideal, Power of Master-State, 
177-90, 226. 

States-general, French (1789), 12, 
48; in the Netherlands, 12. 

Stephen, Sir James, bureaucratic 
power of, 156. 

Stolypin, P. A., policy of, 249, 250. 

Strike, as method of reform, 
260 ; universal, Russian (1905), 
248, 260. 

Stuart monarchy, and self-govern- 
ment, 22. 

Suffrage, universal, progress to- 
towards, 11-17, 111 ; Austrian, 
242 ; British, Chartists' de- 
mands, 78 (1848), demand, 80: 
extension but not universal 
(1867), 151; French, 85, 93, 
116,117,144; German, 89, 116, 
117,128; Spanish, 118; Rus- 
sian demand, 247. 

Suffragette movement, 261. 



Sweden, constitution of, parlia- 
ment established (1866), 115; 
executive uncontrolled by parlia- 
ment, 93 ; modern discon- 
tent with, 63, 65 ; democratic 
principles, spread of, without 
violence, 57 ; Danish power 
in, 122 ; Norway under, 66 ; 
independence of, 231. 

Switzerland, early democracy, 18; 
constitution, 66, discontent with, 
63 ; German intrigues, 234 ; self- 
government in, with referendum, 
268. 

Syndicalism, in France, 259. 

Syria, 254. 

Talaat, Pasha, power of, in 
' Young Turk ' movement, 253. 

Three Estates. See Estates and 
Cortes. 

Tory party, in mid- Victorian 
times, 158. 

Trade, increase of, in Europe, 60 ; 
democracy feared by capitalists, 
175 ; financial methods, modern 
174 ; German, war promoted 
by, 185 ; imperial, motive of 
expansion, 175; mediaeval, power 
of, 11 ; middle-class control 
through, from (1833), 96; politi- 
cal importance of, 23, 24, 56. 

Union, first, 67, 106 ; aims 

of, 107 ; development after 
(1825), 79; engineers, 106; in 
State, no recognition of, 64. 

Unions Act (1871), 165. 

Triple Alliance (1879 and 1882), 
171. 

Tudor monarchy, system of 
government, 19 ; despotism of, 
24. 

Turin, parliament in (1848), 84. 

Turkey, constitution of, parlia- 
ment instituted, 1 ; despotism 
in, 94 ; revolution in (1908), 
231, 252-4 ; self-government, 
attempted by, 61 ; Young 
Turk, movement, 253; Armenia, 
attitude towards, 182 ; German 
domination of, 232 : Italy, war 
with (1910), 231 ; Serbia, influ- 
ence in, 242. 



312 



NATIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 



Ukranians, German influence,233. 

Ulster, German intrigues in, 234 ; 
rebellion unmolested, 260. 

United States of America, consti- 
tution of, early, 26, 28, after 
revolution, 35-45, modern, 120, 
258 ; education, 37 ; geographi- 
cal isolation of, in international 
politics, 38, 45 ; income tax 
struggle, 39 ; Monroe Doctrine 
instituted, 69 ; President of, 
status of, 146 ; self-govern- 
ment in, 35-45, 51, 53; socialist 
experiments in, 99. 

Universities, democratic teaching 
in, 68 ; German, State control 
of, 187. 

Venezelos, Eleftherios, first 
power of, 231. 

Verona, Congress of (1822), 67. 

Vestry, early self-government, 21. 

Victor Emmanuel (Italy), self- 
government pledge kept by, 84. 

Viviani, 202. 

Walla chia, representative council 
(1856), 117. 

War, moral and psychological 
effects of, 286-91 ; forms of 
government affected by, 4 ; 
mediaeval form of, 17 ; modern 
methods, 185 ; militarism, in- 
crease of, in peace, 170, 171. 172; 
nationalism, cause of, 108-9 ; 
Supreme Lord of, 130 ; Ameri- 
can presidential power over, 41 ; 
British Volunteer system, 290 ; 
French impoverished by, 171 ; 
German policy of, 87, 91, 92, 
257, 286 ; preparations of, 235, 
285-6 ; Socialist majority, in- 
centive to, 273-4. 



War, the Great, premonitions and 
predispositions to, long warn- 
ing, 230-77 ; supreme issue of, 
278-97 ; self-government parlia- 
ments affected by, 2, 3, 4, 61, 
62 ; effect of, on German 
socialists, 181, on German Rom- 
anists, 179. 

Wars of the Roses, 19. 

Whig party, foundation of, 26 ; 
in mid-Victorian times, 158 ; 
Irish policy of, 160. 

William i. (Germany), result of 
militarism of, 126 ; army re- 
forms of, 123-4. 

William II. (Germany), on inter- 
national law, cit., 279 ; political 
power of, 128, 129 ; on militar- 
ism, cit., 131 ; Lutheran Church, 
controlled by, 178 ; socialism, 
attitude towards, 180. 

William in. (England), king by in- 
vitation of nation's represen- 
tatives, 73. 

Wool trade, mediaeval, nobles' 
rights in, 14. 

Workmen's Compensation Act, 
212. 

Wiirtemburg, under the Empire 
(1871), 130. 

Yeomen, status of, in early times, 
21 ; decline of, as landowners, 
24, 63. 

' Young Turk ' movement, 231, 
235, 252. 

Zemstva, the, 193, 245, 250 ; early 
demands of, 246 ; limitations of 
(1917), 284. 

' Zollverein,' German foundation 
of, 88. 



Printed in Great Britain by 

T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 

at the University Press, Edinburgh 



